Reviewer Quotes

If a reviewer is beating me up, I just say, ‘Oh well, my writing is not to his or her taste.’ And that’s as far as it goes. Because I will simultaneously read a review where somebody says, ‘Oh my God, I had so much fun reading this book and I learned so much.’

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

I don’t think of myself as a critic at all. I’m a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.

The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.

Over the years, during television interviews, whenever the host or the reviewer or whoever gets cynical and nasty with me, I will behave accordingly. I will defend myself.

I’ve read a lot of bad books. I used to review books for a living, and when you‘re a reviewer you read tons of terrible books.

Most books reviews aren’t very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

I still viewed myself as a reviewer when I was on radio. Was it appropriate for me? I think the answer is it’s only inappropriate if I allowed it to affect my film reviewing. I don’t think you will find any studio that said, ‘Yeah, he went easy on us because he was shopping a script.’

Some movie I was in, I forget which one, some awful little movie, a reviewer said, What is Jessica Walter doing in this movie? And I said, Hello? Trying to make a living?

How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it’s mostly about the reviewer!

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

I am a book reviewer. I write for a glossy magazine called ‘SCI FI.’ The money is not life-changing, but it’s a low-stress gig. Publishers send me their books. More than I could possibly read. I pick a few and write about them, put a very few others on the shelf, to be perused at my leisure, someday.

The truth is, my folk-lore friends and my Saturday Reviewer differ with me on the important problem of the origin of folk-tales. They think that a tale probably originated where it was found.

The power of the print reviewer is one of those urban myths. There have always been shows that slipped under the critical radar to become popular successes: ‘Tobacco Road‘, ‘Abie’s Irish Rose‘ and our old friend ‘Spider-Man’, which got the worst reviews in theatre history and is still apparently going strong.

There was one reviewer from the ‘New York Times,’ I forget his name, who said I was ‘death warmed over.’ I wrote him back that I knew more about death than he did. The ‘Times’ fired him, put him in the cooking department!

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal – a small newspaper.

I generally only eat one meal a day, which is pretty unusual for a restaurant reviewer. It’s not that I have a problem with food; I’ll eat anything that doesn’t involve a bet, a dare, or an initiation ceremony.

A reviewer’s lot is not always an easy one. I can remember flogging myself to finish Harold Brodkey’s ‘The Runaway Soul‘ despite the novel‘s consummate, unmitigated tedium.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

I did a play once where a reviewer said, ‘Martin Freeman’s too nice to play a bad guy.’ And I thought: ‘Well, bad guys aren’t always bad guys, you know?’ When I see someone play the obvious villain, I know it’s false.

I wouldn’t call myself a ‘literary critic,’ just a book reviewer.

I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending.

What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

One reviewer dubbed my first book, ‘Getting Rid of Matthew,’ ‘chick noir,’ and another called it ‘anti chick lit,’ both of which I loved.

The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

I would be far more critical than any reviewer could be of my own work. So I simply don’t read them.

My mum and dad have made Twitter accounts, and they will send me links if there is a bad review and tell me they’ll find out where the reviewer lives.

Any debut novel is usually a case of spitting into the wind – or, just maybe, casting your bread upon the waters. Without an established audience in place, first-time authors have to hope for resonant word of mouth and a receptive reviewer or three.

Over the years, more than one reviewer has described my fantasy series, ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’, as historical fiction about history that never happened, flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons. I take that as a compliment.