A Quote by Michael Hersch

I don't think the role of the critic has changed very much. In the most positive sense, the music critic is one who helps the public navigate what's out there, especially in bringing attention to things they otherwise wouldn't hear about, or to provide a new window into something familiar.
You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.
Music critics are, for the most part, bitter people who are intent at dragging people down for being successful at what they want to do, which is probably music. The oddity of being a critic is: You don't get a diploma, you just decide you're a critic. If someone listens to your opinion rather than their own, it's their mistake. Any critic's top 10, any year, it's something controversial or something that will make them look hipper-than-thou. The whole critic game, we've never played.
If you're familiar enough with my body of work, my voice is a familiar totem, in a sense. I guess I have something characteristic in the way that I sing, although I'm not very personally self-conscious about it, so I don't think about it that much. But when I hear the record I can tell it's me.
I'm my own worst critic and harshest critic and I just want to put honest music out there.
I never wanted to do music to get girls, right, to get popular, or anything like that. I really love music and I want to make it better the best I can. I can tell when something's real, or when something's put together. I can just feel it. So I'm my own worst critic and harshest critic and I just want to put honest music out there.
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.
This is a very proud moment for journalism. I think The New York Times and The Washington Post are genuine champions in this moment. The role that they are playing in democracy is the role that you hear about journalism playing in civics classes. Other people are doing great work, but the Times and the Post have really been leaders. The public is watching, and they are hungry. They know something is wrong, there's a lot of anxiety out there. There's a real sense that the mission of journalism is very clear.
Everybody wants to be a critic: a critic without the actual accolades to be a critic.
The hardest thing in the world is being a critic of your own work. For me time has always been the best critic. If I can put something away and then come back, it's like taking a painting you're working on, turning it upside down, squinting at it, or walking away to get a new view. Time helps you know whether it's worth saving or whether it should be dumped.
Most of my professional work has been in these areas - as a historical critic, as a literary critic. I've done very little in the history of interpretation [as Elie Wiesel has]. I've been interested in it, but I have not contributed to that field, really.
My grandfather is my biggest fashion critic. He takes a keen interest in the millennial fashion, most of which he disapproves of, but he is a very practical fashion critic.
My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.
There's lots of room to be your own worse critic. It's just you, so I think that's inherit, that voice that's always that's there monitoring everything you do. It's definitely worse; the critic is harder when it's just you. If you're doing a show, then the critic can blame the other actors your with.
I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.
I've never been competitive with other actors. I've been competitive with myself and I'm my own worst critic, a terrible critic I am, and unless I get something right, I feel very unhappy.
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