Top 61 Quotes About Writing Reviews
#1. Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?
David Ives
#2. It is a still stranger thing that there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories. It is far pleasanter than writing reviews of famous novels.
Virginia Woolf
#3. Most everything influences my work. Working in a used bookstore. Going for walks in the woods and peering at mushrooms. Writing reviews. Coming from frumpy, grumpy, faded-at-the-knees Winnipeg.
Ariel Gordon
#4. Listen to your critics. Because if you go through life denying what they say, you'll never be a good writer. The only way to improve, is to listen to those who tell you what you need to work on
Adam Snowflake
#5. The truth is, as much as I loved writing restaurant reviews, it always felt very self-indulgent to me. It was so much fun, I loved doing it, but there's so much else to say about food.
Ruth Reichl
#6. Authors worry. We worry about writing. Worry about our editors, our agents, our reviews, and our readers. We worry about everything, including all forms of social media including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and personal websites.
David Macinnis Gill
#7. For the movie review columns, I always knew exactly what I was going to write about - the movies.
Fran Lebowitz
#8. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#10. I have little or no concern at how people interpret my writing, my only concern is to write it.
Robert Black
#11. I don't read reviews if I know in advance they're negative, because I can't have my confidence undermined when I'm writing.
Christopher Moore
#12. Writing is exhilarating, but reading reviews is not. I've been really devastated by 'good' reviews because they misunderstand the project of the book. It can be strangely galvanising to get a 'bad' one.
Eleanor Catton
#13. In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
Oscar Wilde
#14. There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don't want to name names-but there have been men who have seemed to want to destroy me or my writing, men I don't even know.
Marguerite Young
#15. Money talks. And writes. And publishes. And reviews. But it can't read.
Jack Woodford
#16. A writer hopes never to offend, but if he must, pray let him offend the gods before the reviewers.
Chila Woychik
#17. I write mostly positive reviews. I don't write about places that don't interest me.
Jonathan Gold
#18. To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others
Samuel Johnson
#19. I really don't want somebody writing something positive about me if they don't believe in it. I'd rather somebody write something real mean. I like reading bad stuff, it gets me excited. In fact, the only reviews I keep are the bad ones 'cause I think they're the cool ones.
Patti Smith
#20. We sometimes reveal how ignorant or bored we were when we read a book by giving it 5-stars.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#21. My book sales are way down today. Also, I've received two scathing reviews. One of them calls me a purveyor of insipid wet-dreams.
Nenia Campbell
#22. Writing blog posts is totally freeing in a whole new way for me. I'm not writing it for any editor, and I'm not being paid, so I can say whatever I want. I don't have to justify the cost of a book to readers; they get it for free, so expectations are naturally low. (And no one-star reviews!)
Kate Christensen
#23. I have a confession to make. For years, I earned a living - or a sort of living - writing negative book reviews.
Lee Siegel
#24. The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don't.
William Faulkner
#25. I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore. There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. I've learned to despise them.
John Grisham
#26. You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code.
Bill Gates
#27. Every writer prefers good reviews over bad ones, and every writer wants to have lots of readers. But if it doesn't happen, that's fine too. Perhaps I won't throw a party then; I'll simply go home and keep writing.
J.K. Rowling
#28. You start wondering if you deserved those high reviews on your books or if people just pitied you and went "Poor sod. Here's a five star review so you don't hang yourself in the garage.
Ash Gray
#29. The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.
Wilfrid Sheed
#30. Somehow, the whole idea of me writing art reviews was just too much of a complicated thought, but I liked art, and later on I just realized that it would be perhaps a pleasure, and so I decided to do it for 'Art in America' - a lot.
Eileen Myles
#31. The reason for writing that essay was less a personal agenda than an attempt to explain my unease with the general label of "immigrant literature" after I had read quite a number of reviews (in different countries) involving books written by 'immigrants.'
Sasa Stanisic
#32. If you read reviews that you think by their very nature are not respectful of the actresses involved or not appreciating the work as it should be, I think you should write to reviewers or comment and say, "Are you kidding me?"
Romola Garai
#33. It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.
Samuel Johnson
#34. I do not believe writers should read reviews of their own books, and I do not. If one is not careful one is soon writing to please reviewers and not their audience or themselves.
Louis L'Amour
#35. Either way, you wrote the book and now you're complaining about the reviews I'm giving it," I quipped.
"Fair enough." He held up his hands, "I'm going to start writing the sequel which will be considerably less narcissistic. Will you read it?"
"Only if every other girl on campus hasn't.
Tarryn Fisher
#36. Sometimes writing about a TV show, or a movie, or a book, is the most honest way to write about yourself.
Aaron Burch
#37. American travel writing is very healthy. I'm always flicking through the reviews and I see plenty of travel writing - and an impressive line up and continual demand.
John Gimlette
#38. I'm not very popular, because they're bleak and they're mournful and all the rest of it and I get censorious reviews. But I'm only writing fiction. I'm not making munitions, so I think it's acceptable.
Anita Brookner
#39. A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing
articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.
Shirley Hazzard
#40. (Feedback) People become addicted to it. That's why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.
Zadie Smith
#41. I tend to write things and review it afterwards and realise what comes out. I very rarely ever write something and have to take it back.
Ellie Goulding
#42. When we talk about reviews, what we are really talking about is just a market report - it's like reading about the new Lexus. You have to know what the guy writing the review cares about to understand his take. Does he like sports cars, or does he like Bentleys?
Mike Nichols
#44. Probably writers should forget what it was like to write the last novel, and the one before that, and the one before that, or we should all be plumbers. It must be good to be a plumber. Everyone is happy to see you, and no one reviews your work.
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
#45. Books are savaged and careers destroyed by surly snots who write anonymous reviews and publishers can't be bothered to protest this institutionalized corruption.
Warren Murphy
#46. I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book ... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.
Anton Chekhov
#47. I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.
Edward St. Aubyn
#48. Park your ego and listen to your readers. They can be your best friend or your worst enemy. But chances are you'll learn something from them.
Eliza Green
#49. I think people ease into this careerist professionalism, so if you're a writer it's your job to manufacture books as opposed to writing them and to go to festivals and spend your life emotionally invested in reviews or the awards. You have to shrink your universe in a way. To me, it's the opposite.
Arundhati Roy
#50. Frankly, anybody who's going to kill themselves because of a bad review has no business writing a novel in the first place.
Robert Galbraith
#51. Just remember: it's worth all the negative reviews to get your book in the hands of those who'll love it.
Kira Hawke
#52. You know, since the reviews have come out and people have reacted to it, I've realized that is in a sense what has happened. But as I was writing them, I didn't feel a part of any tradition. I think that would have been too overwhelming, in a sense.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#53. As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.
Kurt Vonnegut
#54. If you have too good a time writing hostile reviews, you'll injure not only your sensibility but your soul.
David Lehman
#55. The idea to make hotel reviews the form of the novel came first.So I just started writing hotel reviews and tried to come up with a consistent voice.
Rick Moody
#56. Lazy reviewers look up other people's reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.
Joni Mitchell
#57. The critics have been writing me off for 20 years. That's nothing new. As far as I know I still have plenty of fans and sell lots of records. Do I care what critics say about me? No, and I don't read reviews.
Madonna Ciccone
#58. Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name.
(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)
Salman Rushdie
#59. I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.
Darryl Pinckney
#60. I don't read reviews any more, but I'm told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been writing and it's been a very split kind of response.
Paul Auster
#61. Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don't do it. ... Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. ... Don't take any guff off anybody.
Anne Rice
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