A Quote by John Steinbeck

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play. — © John Steinbeck
Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
Australia play best when they've got a bit of mongrel about them, when they play hard out in the middle, when they don't give an inch, when they play an aggressive brand of cricket.
When you play test cricket, you don't give the Englishmen an inch. Play it tough, all the way. Grind them into the dust.
I find it's very confusing when one critic tells you one thing and one tells you something completely different. Unless all the critics agree on parts of the play that just didn't work. I have stopped reading reviews, because I find writing is all about courage. You must have courage when you start writing a play and you cannot have the voice - you must write things out. You cannot have the voice of a critic telling you, "That didn't work in that play, you cannot make it work in another play." Every time you do a production, it's an experimentation.
When he looks back, the critic sees a eunuch's shadow. Who would be a critic if he could be a writer? Who would hammer out the subtlest insight into Dostoevsky if he could weld an inch of the Karamazovs, or argue the poise of Lawrence if he could shape the free gust of life in The Rainbow?
All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.
Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself. Don't ignore that critic but don't give it more attention than it deserves.
Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself. Don't ignore that critic, but don't give it more attention than it deserves.
I just kind of shoot the finger to the critics. I don't give sh - what a critic says. To me a critic is some loser who has no idea... someone with an opinion. We all have opinions.
At best, the relationship between drama critic and playwright is a pretty twiggy affair. When I'm asked whom I write for, after the obligatory, I write only for myself, I realize that I have an imaginary circle of peers - writers and respected or savvy theatre folk, some dramatic writers and some not, some living, some long gone. . . . Often a writer is aware as he works that a certain critic is going to hate this one. . . . You don't let what a critic might say worry you or alter your work; it might even add a spark to the gleeful process of creation.
I will compensate all your one-inch, two-inch losses because I know how important every inch is to you aged, decrepit men.
It is as hard to find a neutral critic as it is a neutral country in time of war. I suppose if a critic were neutral, he wouldn't trouble to write anything.
It is necessary a writing critic should understand how to write. And though every writer is not bound to show himself in the capacity of critic, every writing critic is bound to show himself capable of being a writer; for if he be apparently impotent in this latter kind, he is to be denied all title or character in the other.
I think theatre is a democratic act and I think writing a play is not a democratic act. I think we should give writers more leeway and space to write the thing they want to write, and then we should produce the play, multiple times, and let them re-write it.
I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.
This is the problem I have: I write a play and I give it to a director and they say, 'I'll do it one condition: if you play the role.'
I used to want to be a critic. I think it's an awesome job. You get to watch all this stuff and then write about it and analyze it and give insight into it. That's an amazing job. I was terrible at it, though.
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