Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on.

I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

People gave me such a bad time about wanting a baby. I didn't want a baby, and I still don't. I wanted a dog.

You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.

Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on.

I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.

I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.

Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.

Shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

To what derision should I be exposed from a thousand quarters!- An unlearned female entering the lists of criticism against the mighty Johnson!

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

Though bitter, good medicine cures illness. Though it may hurt, loyal criticism will have beneficial effects.

No American soldier should be allowed to set foot on Iranian soil, regardless of the criticism we have of the Iranian government.

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

This issue, if not addressed, leaves any President, including George Bush, open to the criticism that they are essentially ignoring the destruction of the nation and I believe that with all my heart.

A woman's flattery may inflate a man's head a little; but her criticism goes straight to his heart, and contracts it so that it can never again hold quite as much love for her.

I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger.

Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

Dodi got a lot of criticism when he began dating Princess Diana. No one seemed to think he was good enough for her.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

The other part of our proposal that gets the 'dittoheads' upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don't want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community.

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

I think the hardest part about being a teenager is dealing with other teenagers - the criticism and the ridicule, the gossip and rumors.

You can't operate a company by fear, because the way to eliminate fear is to avoid criticism. And the way to avoid criticism is to do nothing.

Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

Despite a decade of criticism and budget cuts, the specialised UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the world.

It would be very easy for us to do a collection that everybody would like and not criticize. But criticism is a part of life. You have to take it.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Dare to risk public criticism.

In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world - in America first but also in Europe - has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance.

Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.

What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.