#reviews

The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych." [Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist, The Guardian, 19 February 2013] ↗

— Colm Tóibín

#conceit #critique #diptychs #grandeur #novelists

While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw—that of outright unreadability. ↗

— Martin Amis

#don-quixote #literary-criticism #miguel-de-cervantes #literary-criticism

I don't take reviews very seriously, but in their totality I think they are representative of how the audience feels, and of what their reaction is. There's always one guy who doesn't get it. ↗

— David Zucker

#audience #feels #get #guy #how

People keep saying, 'Oh, you're getting all these great reviews, that must make you really happy.' I guess it does, but mostly it's just a relief. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#getting #great #guess #happy #i

The bad reviews get to me, believe me. ↗

— Daniel Craig

#believe #get #me #reviews

I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them, or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work. ↗

— John Grisham

#find #hate #i #i have learned #ignoring

To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death. ↗

— Mark Twain

#jane-austen #death

Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has. ↗

— Sandra Day O'Connor

#amount #cases #court #courts #discretion

I guess what's most surprised me in most of the reviews is that they don't seem to get the noir story in the dream sequence, so they analyze it like a straight noir movie. ↗

— Brian De Palma

#dream #get #guess #i #like

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate! ↗

— Joanna Trollope

#edge #either #experienced #generous #great