Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves. E M Cioran
Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are. Henry Fielding
The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same. Clive James
Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing. Joyce Carol Oates