The mind is a vagrant thing. . . Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time. Answering criticism that the book for which he won a Pulitzer Prize was written in the years he had been employed at the Smithsonian. He specified that did not write on the premises there, but only at home outside of working hours.
It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.
The simplest kind of guidance (critique) comes every day, and many times a day in the form of discomfort.
Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!
The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.
One of my favorite little sayings is, 'To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great intricacy, situations which unavoidably arise in such activities as legislation, arbitration, mathematics or programming.
We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.
A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.
You say I'm small? I certainly can relate, although it is a matter of perspective. The distance is deceptive, my friend, you standtoo low.
My views have changed as much as the world, and more precisely, the world of art. You have to remember that all my criticisms of the institution were done directly from the world I was in and my analysis of it. Many things that I said about the omnipotence of the museums, for example, are today almost obsolete. In fact, the museum and the institution drastically lost their power by the pure fact that they disseminated by thousands around the world.
Rule of criticism: only attend to the shape, and the purpose will manifest itself.
If you have something critical to sat to a player, preface it by saying something positive. That way when you get to the criticism, at least you know he'll be listening.