A Quote by E. B. White
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
Related Quotes
Is it ever worthwhile to buy a review? Not in my opinion. With independent paid review services, quality can be a problem; plus, there are plenty of non-professional book review venues out there that will review for free.
[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.
Incidentally, the very, very first review that James Lavelle and I saw of Endtroducing was very negative! It was in The Wire, and the context of the review was that, you know, Mo'Wax was so far behind Ninja Tune. Heheheh. And people wonder why there was this sense of a feud between labels! We just kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'Oh, well, let the floodgates open!' But, not to be facile, that was literally the last bad review I ever saw for that album.
I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: 'I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.'
If I do decide to review a product, I sometimes negotiate with a company the timing of the review but never its outcome or tone. I sometimes strive to be the first to publish a review, but I never promise a good review in exchange for that timing.
It was my third Second City review before I even got mentioned in the review. It was the third review where it finally was like, 'And Lauren Ash is here.' Thank God, it's about time!
I built a career on negative reviews. I didn't get a good review ever until Fran Lebowitz gave me a good review in Interview. That was the first good review I got in 10 years.
The review I've been most offended by came when I played Hamlet. I'd always prided myself on being an 'invisible actor' and not getting in the way of the play. But this review didn't mention me once. That's worse than being insulted.
One thing I noticed over time is that if I got a bad review, usually the bad part of it was at the very end. I could tell that nobody read the whole review because they would just say, "It was great to see the review!" In a way, my brain shuts down at the end of an article. It doesn't really want to go to the end.
The first time I saw a review of one of my permaculture books was three years after I first started writing on it. The review started with, "Permaculture Two is a seditious book." And I said, "At last someone understands what permaculture's about."
Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc.
If I'm reviewing a record, man, I play that record to death, which is ironic in a way because if I review a concert I feel very confident in myself, certainly at this point, and have for most of my career. You're only hearing it once and then you go to your typewriter and you write the review.
The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books. When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.
When a buyer leaves a negative review, it is a great opportunity to connect and find out why they did and how to make your business better.
I prefer a good review. A bad review that dismisses us... I take it with a grain of salt. I go, 'Okay, they didn't even try.'
What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer