Cold Quote by Edward Abbey

If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the…

— H. L. Mencken

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment, too?

— Alexander Pope

“He was a man who regarded his opinions, however briefly adopted, as revealed truth: he never backed down, or listened, or compromised. He was…

— Ben Macintyre

“The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus Paine was better than Burke when it came…

— Christopher Hitchens

It is easy to criticize an author, but difficult to appreciate him.

— Anonymous

Every writer's got to pay some attention, I suppose, to what his critics say because theirs is a reflection of what the audience feels…

— Edward Albee

“Critics were rigid and hidebound, never willing to give due credit for anything that didn’t fit in with their predetermined parameters of what fiction…

— Therese Anne Fowler

My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great…

— Neil Gaiman

“He was an American character, one typical of men of his generation, men who embraced the notion of freedom and individualism and the open…

— Barack Obama

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their…

— Alexis de Tocqueville

“A real and admirable writer is the one who can write good books but can take criticisms better.”

— Nicholaa Spencer

“Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not…

— Gaston Bachelard