E. B. WHITE
Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps,
but still attached to life at all four corners.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Writing a novel is like building a wall brick by brick;
only amateurs believe in inspiration.
FRANK YERBY
Edna Ferber said similarly: “Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill, and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!”
Â
Writing is thinking on paper.
WILLIAM ZINSSER
WRITERS ON CRITICS & REVIEWERS: A METAPHORICAL POTPOURRI
The poison pens of writers have been directed at many targets over the years, but never more venomously than when aimed at critics and reviewers. A sampling of the best appear below.
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American critics are like American universities.
They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
EDWARD ALBEE
Reviewers are, as Coleridge declared,
a species of maggots, inferior to bookworms,
living on the delicious brains of real genius.
WALTER BAGEHOT
A critic is a bundle of biases held
loosely together by a sense of taste.
WHITNEY BALLIETT
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every night,
they see how it should be done every night,
but they can't do it themselves.
BRENDAN BEHAN
A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic.
No more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.
JIM BISHOP
And, of course, with the birth of the artist
came the inevitable afterbirthâthe critic.
MEL BROOKS,
from
History of the World, Part I
Criticsâ¦
Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.
ROBERT BURNS
The critic roams through culture, looking for prey.
MASON COOLEY
Criticsâ¦are of two sorts:
those who merely relieve themselves against the flower of beauty,
and those, less continent, who afterwards scratch it up.
WILLIAM EMPSON
A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist,
in the same way that a man becomes an informer
when he cannot be a soldier.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Don't be dismayed by
the opinions of editors, or critics.
They are only the traffic cops of the arts.
GENE FOWLER
Critical lice are like body lice,
which desert corpses to seek the living.
THÃOPHILE GAUTIER
What a blessed thing it is that nature,
when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors,
contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.
A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing
clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live.
It is the same with criticsâ
they desire our blood, not our pain.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptible race of men.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics
is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.
JOHN OSBORNE,
quoted in
Time
magazine, October 31, 1977
Reviewers, with some rare exceptions,
are a most stupid and malignant race.
As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair,
so an unsuccessful author turns critic.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A poet that fails in writing becomes often a morose critic;
the weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
A bad review is like baking a cake
with all the best ingredients
and having someone sit on it.
DANIELLE STEELE
The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug; he deposits his egg
in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.
MARK TWAIN
A critic is a man who knows
the way but can't drive the car.
KENNETH TYNAN JOHN UPDIKE
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry
as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
JOHN UPDIKE
I have long felt that any reviewer
who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous.
He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor
and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Critics are like the brushers of noblemen's clothes.
HENRY WOTTON
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.
W
hen I began working on this book, I wasn't sure what to title it, so I put the question to the people who subscribe to my weekly e-newsletter (
Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week
). Out of the hundreds of suggestions received, the one I finally selected was independently suggested by five separate people. I was aware of the sayingâa clever alteration of a famous remark from Will Rogersâbut for some reason hadn't chosen it. A special thanks to the following people:
Maya DeBus, Don Groves, Sam Hanson, Don Hauptman, and Stan Laite
My deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Katherine Robinson, who is a partner in every aspect of my life, including my book-writing efforts.
I would also like to thank my agent, George Greenfield of
CreativeWell, Inc.,
and my HarperCollins editor, Phil Friedman, for their invaluable help.
Many hundreds of subscribers to my newsletterâfar too numerous to list hereâhave provided me with quotations, many of which have found their way into this book. My heartfelt thanks to all. The contributions of the following people, however, deserve special mention: Don Hauptman for his regular
donvelopes,
Carolanne Reynolds for her helpful feedback, Terry Coleman for her knowledge of all things canine and equine, and finally to the following people for their long-standing interest in, and support of, my efforts: Karé Anderson, Amy Brennan, Pam Bruce, Jerry Caplin, Linnda Durré, Loren Ekroth, Howard Eskin, Carl Faith, Anu Garg, Fran Hamilton, Dan and Linda Hart, David Hartson, Blair Hawley,
Art Haykin, Chuck Jambotkar, Norman and Gary Kaplan, Derm Keohane, Bob Kelly, Amit Kothari, Julius La Rosa, Richard Lederer, Milton Lewin, Marlene and Barney Ovrut, Kalman Packhous, Richard Raymond III, Dennis Ridley, Don Ruhl, Lee Sechrest, Ed Sizemore, Ed Schneider, Art Tugman, G. Armour Van Horn, and Joseph Woods.
Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.
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Aaron, Henry “Hank,” 280, 289
Abbey, Edward, 17
Abley, Mark, 103â4
About, Edmond, 186
Achard, Marcel, 298
Achebe, Chinua, 45
Ackerman, Diane, 26
Adams, Douglas, 66, 239
Adams, Henry Brooks, 45
Adams, Joey, 67
Adams, John, 254, 259
Adams, John Quincy, 79, 218â19,
Addison, Joseph, 4
Adler, Mortimer, 26
Aeschylus, 26, 200
Akhenaton, 2
Akihito, Crown Prince of Japan, 60â61
Albee, Edward, 311
Alcott, Louisa May, 103, 122
Aldington, Richard, 263
Aldiss, Brian, 229
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 309
Aleichem, Sholom, 122, 163
Ali, Muhammad, 163, 280, 282, 289
Allen, Dick, 280
Allen, Fred, 124, 240
Allen, Steve, 62
Allen, Woody, 67, 140, 204, 207, 240
Allende, Isabel, 203
Allport, Gordon W., 163
Alsop, Joseph W., Jr., 259
Alsop, Stewart, 225
Ames, Fisher, 255
Amiel, Henri-Frédéric, 26, 225
Amory, Cleveland, 67
Anacharsis, 256â57
Anderson, Marian, 43
Andrews, Julie, 248
Angelino, Henry, 204
Angell, Roger, 16
Angelou, Maya, 45, 122, 143, 163
Anouilh, Jean, 163â64, 298
Anthony, Susan B., 225
Antisthenes, 3â4
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 241
Aristotle, 9, 10, 11, 14, 123, 142, 143, 259
Armstrong, Louis Satchmo,” 83
Arnold, Matthew, 111
Asch, Sholem, 298
Ashley, Elizabeth, 205
Asimov, Isaac, 123, 127, 299
Astor, Mary, 205
Attlee, Clement, 89
Atwood, Margaret, 186
Auchincloss, Louis, 84
Auden, W. H., 67, 143
Augustine, Saint, 11
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Babbin, Jed, 92
Bachelard, Gaston, 116
Bacon, Francis, 19, 27, 186â87
Baer, Arthur “Bugs,” 187, 281
Bagehot, Walter, 13, 311
Baker, Russell, 67â68, 123, 187, 259, 280
Baldwin, Faith, 58, 115
Baldwin, James, 123, 160, 203, 241, 301
Baldwin, Stanley, 86
Ball, George, 112
Ballard, J. G., 260
Balliett, Whitney, 311
Balzac, Honoré de, 27, 45, 124, 162, 164, 187, 205, 260, 293
Bankhead, Tallulah, 87
Bardot, Brigitte, 113
Barr, Roseanne, 205
Barrie, James M., 93, 119â20, 124
Barrington, Jonah, 279
Barry, Dave, 68
Barry, Lynda, 160, 164
Barrymore, Drew, 241
Barrymore, Ethel, 241
Bartholdi, Frédéric-Auguste, 84
Baruch, Bernard, 299
Bates, Marston, 114
Bateson, Mary Catherine, 225
Baudelaire, Charles, 120, 164, 213, 304
Baudrillard, Jean, 205â6
Bauer, Gerard, 115
Bayan, Rick, 46, 109, 143, 225
Baylor, Don, 281
Beach, Sylvia, 299
Beale, Howard K., 85
Beard, James, 68
Beaton, Cecil, 85
Beatty, Warren, 208
Bednarik, Chuck, 278
Beecham, Thomas, 83, 85
Beecher, Henry Ward, 27, 45, 107, 162, 164, 171, 222
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 95
Begley, Sharon, 112
Behan, Brendan, 311
Belli, Melvin, 85
Belloc, Hilaire, 299
Bellow, Saul, 206, 299
Bench, Johnny, 281
Bennett, Alan, 124
Bergen, Edgar, 264
Bergman, Ingmar, 237â38, 241
Bergman, Ingrid, 225
Berle, Milton, 187
Berne, Eric, 163
Berra, Yogi, 281
Bierce, Ambrose, 158
Billings, Josh, (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), 45, 124, 144
Bishop, Jim, 311
Bismarck, Otto von, 260
Black, Lewis, 68
Blakely, Mary Kay, 187
Blanchard, Ken, 108
Blessington, Marguerite, 46, 185, 299
Blount, Roy, Jr., 73
Bocca, Geoffrey, 64
Bodie, Frank Stephen “Ping,” 281
Bogart, Humphrey, 248
Bonds, Barry, 16
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 27
Booth, Edward, 236
Booth, John Wilkes, 236
Borg, Björn, 284â85
Borge, Victor, 64
Borges, Jorge Luis, 165
Boudreaux, Donald J., 262
Boulding, Kenneth E., 17
Bourgeois, Jeanne, 149
Bourget, Paul, 292
Bowen, Elizabeth, 164, 169
“Boy George,” (George Alan O'Dowd), 88
Bradbury, Malcolm, 68
Bradbury, Ray, 46
Bradstreet, Anne, 27â28
Bradstreet, Simon, 28
Brancusi, Constantin, 102
Brando, Marlon, 94
Braude, Jacob M., 124
Brawne, Fanny, 149
Brenan, Gerald, 159, 187
Brett, George, 283
Breuer, Josef, 221â22
Brice, Fanny, 193
Britt, Stuart H., 5
Broder, David, 260â61
Brokaw, Tom, 261
Bronson, Charles, 89
Brontë, Charlotte, 44
Brooks, Albert, 241â42
Brooks, Gwendolyn, 225
Brooks, Mel, 62, 312
Brooks, Phillips, 113
Brooks, Van Wyck, 86
Brothers, Joyce, 165, 188
Broun, Heywood, 84
Brown, Drew “Bundini,” 280
Brown, Helen Gurley, 165
Brown, Jerry, 261
Brown, John Mason, 83, 106, 240
Brown, Norman O., 115
Brown, Rita Mae, 165, 206, 239
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 28
Browning, Robert, 28
Broyard, Anatole, 165
Bruno, Frank, 281
Bryan, Henry F., 242
Bryan, William Jennings, 96
Bryant, William Cullen, 2, 45, 56
Bryson, Bill, 282
Buck, Pearl S., 28
Buffett, Jimmy, 124
Bugner, Joe, 282
Bukowski, Charles, 206
Bullock, Sandra, 215
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 28
Burbank, Luther, 109
Burchill, Julie, 144
Burgess, Gelett, 165
Burke, Edmund, 262, 300
Burnett, Carol, 193, 230
Burns, George, 206, 249
Burns, Ken, 83
Burns, Robert, 312
Burroughs, John, 299
Buscaglia, Leo, 144
Bush, George H. W., 89, 90, 93, 98
Bush, George W., 90, 95, 98, 264, 267â68, 276
Butler, Brett, 206
Butler, R. A. “Rab,” 68
Butler, Samuel, 12, 46, 102, 125, 144, 223, 226
Buxton, Charles, 29
Byrne, Robert, 77
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 106, 142, 161, 184
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Cadwell, Lucy Lee, 171
Caen, Herb, 68
Caine, Michael, 242
Campbell, Joseph (American mythologist), 29, 109, 125
Campbell, Joseph (Irish poet), 226
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 99
Campbell, Patrick, 282
Campbell, Roy, 300
Camus, Albert, 22â23, 24â25, 105, 126, 300
Canady, John, 83
Capone, Al, 5
Capote, Truman, 69, 91, 98, 108, 125, 245, 300
Capra, Frank, 110
Cardin, Pierre, 108
Carey, Peter, 144
Carlyle, Thomas, 29
Caron, Leslie, 145
Carson, Johnny, 185
Carson, Rachel, 46
Carter, James Earl, Jr., 91, 96
Casanova, Giacomo, 125, 184
Cash, Pat, 282
Cassavetes, John, 86
Cather, Willa, 144, 226
Cecil, David, Lord, 67
Cendrars, Blaise, 300
Cervantes, Miguel de, 46, 161
Chamfort, Nicolas, 46, 144, 159, 165â66
Chandler, Raymond, 47, 72
Chaplin, Charles, 125
Charles, Prince of Wales, 83
Chase, Alexander, 242
Cheever, John, 282
Chekhov, Anton, 11, 297
Cheney, Richard “Dick,” 5, 267â68, 276
Chesterfield, Lord, (Philip Dormer Stanhope), 29, 226
Chesterton, G. K., 104, 106, 152, 188, 261
Child, Julia, 125
Cho, Margaret, 69
Chopin, Kate, 47
Christie, Agatha, 184
Churchill, Winston, 19, 31, 47, 69, 86, 89, 261â62, 267, 291
Chute, B. J., 300
Ciasno, Galeazzo, 266
Cicero, 142, 226
Clark, Frank A., 188
Clarke, Creston, 82
Clausewitz, Karl von, 262
Clay, Henry, 79, 94, 218
Cleopatra, 70
Clinton, William, 41, 259
Cocks, Barnett, 1
Cocteau, Jean, 227, 243, 301
Cohen, Leonard, 145
Cohn, Harry, 90
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 262
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 47, 142
Colet, Louise, 303
Colette, 145, 155
Collins, Churton, 97
Collins, Joan, 211
Colton, Charles Caleb, 145, 166, 181â82, 227, 262
Columbus, Christopher, 24
Comfort, Alex, 206â7
Confucius, 110
Congreve, William, 145, 181
Connery, Sean, 249
Connolly, Cyril, 47, 112, 115, 125, 145
Connors, Jimmy, 282, 284
Cooke, Alistair, 243
Cooley, Mason, 7, 166, 217, 312
Coolidge, Calvin, 92
Cooper, Jilly, 146
Copland, Aaron, 86, 243
Corelli, Marie, 185
Corey, Professor Irwin, 188
Corneille, Pierre, 175
Cort, David, 207
Cosell, Howard, 283
Cossman, E. Joseph, 166
Couric, Katie, 39
Cousins, Norman, 44, 63, 65
Covey, Steven R., 146
Coward, Noël, 64, 304
Cowley, Abraham, 126
Cowley, Malcolm, 301
Cowper, William, 47
Cox, Marcelene, 188
Craig, Walter, 85
Crawford, Joan, 86, 162
Crisp, Quentin, 86, 87, 108, 146, 207, 301
Cruise, Tom, 95
Cumberland, Richard, 29
Cuomo, Mario, 262â63
Â
Dahlberg, John (Lord Acton), 259
Dahmer, Jeffrey, 286
Daly, Arnold, 283
Daly, Tyne, 246
Dangerfield, Rodney, 207
Dante Alighieri, 161
Darrow, Clarence, 30
Daugherty, Hugh “Duffy,” 283
Davies, John, 181
Davies, Robertson, 301
Davis, Bette, 166, 207, 243, 244
Dayan, Moshe, 109
de Beauvoir, Simone, 207, 227, 229
de Bernieres, Louis, 157
Deighton, Len, 263
Dekker, Thomas, 227
Delacroix, Eugène, 48
Demaret, Jimmy, 283
Democritus, 215
Dennis, Patrick, 130
de Unamuno, Miguel, 172
Deutsch, Adolph, 243
De Vries, Peter, 5, 126, 189, 207
Dewar, Thomas, 166
Dewey, Thomas, 90, 91â92
Dickens, Charles, 294
Dickinson, Emily, 103
Didion, Joan, 189
Dietrich, Marlene, 147, 208, 244
Dietz, Howard, 87
Diller, Phyllis, 70, 189, 208
Dinesen, Isak, 48
Diogenes, 30, 31
Diogenes Laertius, 142
Disraeli, Benjamin, 111, 147, 272, 301
D'Israeli, Isaac, 147
Doctorow, E. L., 302
Dodson, Fitzhugh, 30
Donahue, Phil, 230
Donne, John, 27, 290
Douglas, Kirk, 237, 238
Douglas, Norman, 302
Draco, 256
Dreiser, Theodore, 113
Drucker, Peter, 48
Dryden, John, 92
Duffy, Maureen, 166
Dulles, John Foster, 86
Dumas, Alexandre, fils, 189
Dumas, Alexandre, père, 189
Duncan, Isadora, 147
Dunn, Irina, 141
Dunne, John Gregory, 302
Dyson, Brian, 121
Â
Edison, Thomas Alva, 112
Edwards, Harry, 278
Einstein, Albert, 30, 42â43, 83, 118, 126, 241, 250, 263
Einstein, Mileva, 42
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 263
Eklund, Britt, 208
Eliot, George, 48, 87, 156, 227, 263â64
Ellis, Havelock, 30, 143, 208
Ellison, Harlan, 166â67
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 22, 23, 24, 30, 42, 48, 80, 100â101, 104, 109, 110, 112, 115, 126, 167, 221
Empson, William, 312
Ephron, Nora, 70, 87
Epictetus, 40
Esar, Evan, 127
Ettinger, Bob, 147
Â
Fadiman, Clifton, 103, 104, 127
Federer, Roger, 287â88
Fellini, Federico, 228
Fenwick, Millicent, 30
Ferber, Edna, 310
Feynman, Richard P., 204
Field, Eugene, 82
Fields, W. C., 70, 244
Finck, Henry Theophilus, 111
Fisher, Eddie, 91
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 228, 292, 293, 302
Flatman, Thomas, 222
Flaubert, Gustave, 167, 302, 303, 304, 312
Fleming, Ian, 208
Fleming, Peggy, 283
Fletcher, Phineas, 167
Flynn, Errol, 249
Fonda, Jane, 148
Fontaine, Joan, 208
Forbes, B. C., 31
Ford, Ford Madox, 86
Ford, Gerald, 87, 96, 264
Forster, E. M., 167
Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 31, 120
Foster, George, 284
Fowler, Gene, 307, 312
Fox, Henry, 307
Foxworthy, Jeff, 208
France, Anatole, 303
Francis, Brendan, 264
Francis de Sales, Saint, 146
Franco, Catherine, 148, 209
Franklin, Benjamin, 26, 45, 127, 148, 209, 219â20, 255, 256
Frazier, Joe, 282, 284
French, Marilyn, 159
Freud, Sigmund, 31, 88
Friday, Nancy, 209
Friedenberg, Edgar Z., 147
Friedman, Robert, 167
Fripp, Robert, 112
Fromm, Erich, 167
Frost, Robert, 11, 23, 109, 190, 296
Frye, David, 87
Frye, Northrop, 303
Fuller, Margaret, 31
Fuller, R. Buckminster, 58
Fuller, Thomas, 31
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Gable, Clark, 89, 249
Gabor, Zsa Zsa, 190
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 264, 273
Garbo, Greta, 107
Gardner, John W., 121â22
Garfield, James A., 228