A Quote by Louis Dudek

A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.

Louis Dudek

Quote Topics

Best Critic Great Literature Table Waiter

Quote Author

Louis Dudek
Canadian - Poet
February 6, 1918 - March 23, 2001

If you're a waiter, the worst thing you can do is go to work resenting your job. This will sound trite - but it's the reality, and part of my personality - yet when I was a waiter, I tried to be the best waiter, and when I was a bingo-caller I tried to be the best bingo-caller.

Russell Crowe

When I was a waiter, I wanted to be the best waiter I could be and worked to be better at it every day.

Robert Herjavec

Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

William Styron

Paradoxically, the simpler poetry is, the more difficult it becomes for a critic to discuss intelligently. Trained to explicate, the critic often loses the ability to evaluate literature outside the critical act. A work is good only in proportion to the richness and complexity of interpretations it provokes.

Dana Gioia

When I go to a restaurant I always ask the manager, "Give me a table near a waiter."

Henny Youngman

Restaurants should be democratic; you shouldn't be made to feel privileged for getting a table or being lectured by the waiter.

Marco Pierre White

The important thing is to do what you most love in the best way. If you love literature, you could be a great writer and perhaps one day become a Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature.

Aaron Ciechanover

There is no way that my mother hasn't influenced my career. She's my first critic. She's my best critic. She has the best instincts from writing to style to editing, to the visual elements of my career.

Lena Dunham

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music - his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting - that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.

Oscar Wilde

I must be cheaper now than I was ten years ago in order to get a laugh. It's not funny now if I leave the table and give the waiter a nickel tip, which was a laugh years ago. Today I must maneuver it so that somehow I get the waiter to give me a nickel tip.

Jack Benny

When you find a waiter who is a waiter and not an actor, writer, musician or poet, you've found a jewel.

Andre Soltner

When I was a waiter I was fired twice from the same restaurant. I guess I was that good of an actor but that bad of a waiter.

Nathan Fillion

A critic is a lug-worm in the liver of literature.

Lawrence Durrell

The best tournament that I have ever played in was in 1950. It was great - a waiter came to you during the game, and you could order anything you wanted to drink (even some vodka, if you liked). Pity, there are no longer tournaments organized in this manner.

Boris Spassky

The sincere artist is usually his own best critic, but continuous and prolonged work on one painting will sometimes dull his judgment... The critic is in demand, but he must be competent.