Quotes & Sayings About Bad Reviews

There are two kinds of reviews: Good ones and bad ones. Within that sliding scale there are two other categories: Favorable and Unfavorable.

Of course, I hope for all Good Reviews that are also Favorable - but how likely is that? If a review isn't favorable, I just hope is well-written. — R.S. Mellette

I never read bad reviews about myself, because my friends invariably tell me about them. — Oscar Levant

I think that I've got some pretty bad reviews on albums or songs that later proved themselves. — Carly Simon

The reviews on it, and the new novel, Honky Tonk Samurai have been awesome, though I'm of the school if you believe the good ones you got to believe the bad ones, it's been mostly good ones. The previewers seem to be very happy and excited about it. I know I am. There are plans to continue if it does well. — Joe R. Lansdale

I guess you have to be a little arrogant to be a writer. I decided early on that just because a lot of other writers were bothered by getting bad reviews didn't really mean that the things were particularly important. By the same token, the good ones didn't mean all that much either. So I just forget about reviews and I wrote what I wanted. — Roger Zelazny

When you do comedy, you get impervious to good and bad reviews. — Adam McKay

I'm used to bad reviews. — Roger Moore

Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don't do it. ... Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. ... Don't take any guff off anybody. — Anne Rice

Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them. — Jane Smiley

[About John Updike's Rabbit Run] The author fails to convince us that his puppets are interesting in themselves, or that their plight has implications that transcend their narrow world. — Chicago Tribune

If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won't. You'll already have made that art, and when they're talking about the last thing you did, you should already be making the next thing.
If bad reviews (of whatever kind) upset you, just don't read them. It's not like you've signed an agreement with the person buying the book to exchange your book for their opinion.
Do whatever you have to do to keep making art. I know people who love bad reviews, because it means they've made something happen and made people talk; I know people who have never read any of their reviews. It's their call. You get on with making art. — Neil Gaiman

To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable - like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death. — Mark Twain

I don't read reviews. Just because that is something that's directly connected to my job. I'm doing this because I love it, not because I'm necessarily looking for approval or anything like that. To me, it seems that reading reviews - whether they're good ones or bad ones - can only sort of force the person to divorce themselves from the reality of what it is they do for a living. So I don't read reviews. — Kate Winslet

What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change. — Jerome K. Jerome

Sometimes it can be useful to read your bad reviews. — Heidi Julavits

Bad reviews I've gotten never diminished the number of people in my audience; good reviews have never added to the number of people in my audience; be your own critic. — Frank Sinatra

Lolita... is undeniably news in the world of books. Unfortunately, it is bad news. There are two equally serious reasons why it isn't worth any adult reader's attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive. — Orville Prescott

It's fine when you careen off disasters and terrifyingly bad reviews and rejection and all that stuff when you're young; your resilience is just terrific. — Harold Prince

Oh, great reviews are the worst. They mislead you more than the bad ones, because they only fuel your ego. Then you only want another one, like potato chips or something, and the best thing you get is fat and bloated. I'd rather just refuse, thanks. — Chazz Palminteri

You got to deal with reviews the same way you deal with your views, which I a long time ago stopped reading because the point is if you believe the good ones you have to believe the bad ones. It's kind of all or nothing. — Steven Soderbergh

If a book isn't at least somewhat polarizing, it didn't say anything of value.
[Blog entry - November 1, 2014] — Ilona Andrews

With all of my films if I get one bad review and a bunch of good reviews the bad one is the only one that will stay with me, which really sucks! — Peter Farrelly

I was seeing a lot of really good things about Get Shorty when it came out, and my wife pointed out that if you validate the good reviews, you also have to validate the bad reviews. — Barry Sonnenfeld

I'd love to work on something that gets some type of critical respect. This business is sometimes so brutal - you work on something for months and really feel like the project is good and you're doing the best work you can, and then it just gets hammered by critics. It's such a bummer sometimes, because everything seems to build up to the release and a couple of bad reviews can make it seem like it was all a waste, which you know it wasn't. — Jeff Cardoni

Have you ever gotten a bad review, Master Huud?"
"Hundreds of them."
"Do they hurt?"
"Of course. But you get over it. Critics are just people, lad. They're entitled to their opinions. They're not the enemy."
"Who is the enemy?"
"Censors. — Katie Waitman

Writers are funny about reviews: when they get a good one they ignore it
but when they get a bad review they never forget it. Every writer I know is the same way: you get a hundred good reviews, and one bad, andyou remember only the bad. For years, you go on and fantasize about the reviewer who didn't like your book; you imagine him as a jerk, a wife-beater, a real ogre. And, in the meantime, the reviewer has forgotten all about the whole thing. But, twenty years later, the writer still remembers that one bad review. — Art Buchwald

Understand That Bad Reviews Are a Sign That You're Relevant The only way you could never get any negative reviews would be if you were so incredibly irrelevant that no one thought you were worth talking or thinking about. — Sean Platt

I'm used to getting reviews. I try not to read much because you'll always focus on the bad ones and not remember the good ones, so it can be a negative thing for a performer. — Sam Trammell

Everybody says before reviews come out, 'Oh, reviews don't matter,' just in case they're bad; everyone want to brace themselves. — Colin Quinn

It's hard enough doing something bold without jumping into your bad reviews. — Kenny Loggins

[On Brave New World] "Mr. Huxley has been born too late. Seventy years ago, the great powers of his mind would have been anchored to some mighty certitude, or to some equally mighty scientific denial of a certitude. Today he searches heaven and earth for a Commandment, but searches in vain: and the lack of it reduces him, metaphorically speaking, to a man standing beside a midden, shuddering and holding his nose. — L.A.G. Strong

I can be. I do not normally try to be. In fact, there have been some reviews-which I've loved-that said I didn't
try to sell my show on sex, that I sang my show. On the other hand, I know I'm cute. I can dance. I don't have a
bad figure. I know exactly what I am. I'm certainly no great beauty. I know exactly how far I can go. — Stevie Nicks

Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer. [1857] — Le Figaro

In the past, I've had my share of good reviews, but it's always the crazy, scary, weirdo guy. I don't even know how it happened. Look at me. I mean, when I'm naked, I look like a bald chicken. How did I get to be a scary bad guy? — Gary Oldman

From my close observation of writers ... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. — Isaac Asimov

Every year I tell myself that I'm not going to read any reviews and then I do. We're all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it's part of the game, you're going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that's how it goes. I don't write for the reviews. — Jodi Picoult

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent ... this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare. — Clifton Fadiman

Even reading my first bad review was an awesome experience. It was cool because you make something and not everybody's going to like it. I felt like that kind of grew me up a little bit into a professional. I was a student filmmaker, and no one writes reviews about student films. — Ryan Coogler

When the reviews are bad I tell my staff that they can join me as I cry all the way to the bank. — Liberace

Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist? — C.S. Lewis

To me, I read good reviews in lots of papers and bad reviews in lots of papers. — Sheila Nevins

While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw - that of outright unreadability. — Martin Amis

You can't listen to what people who aren't musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don't want to hear, 'Your kid is ugly.' But I knew the record was good and it would sell. — Brian McKnight

Worse than bad reviews is to be ignored. — Neil Diamond

I don't read reviews or interviews or anything, just because I'm afraid; If I believed the good, then I'd believe the bad, and there will be bad. — Sia Furler

[When asked if he had ever learned anything about his work from film criticism]
No. To see a film once and write a review is an absurdity. Yet very few critics ever see a film twice or write about films from a leisurely, thoughtful perspective. The reviews that distinguish most critics, unfortunately, are those slambang pans which are easy to write and fun to write and absolutely useless. There's not much in a critic showing off how clever he is at writing silly, supercilious gags about something he hates. — Stanley Kubrick

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

I don't want to be a part of the demographics. I want to be an individual. I wear each of my films as a badge of pride. That's why I cherish all my bad reviews. If the critics start liking my movies, then I'm in deep trouble. — John Carpenter

1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the things they read (or watch, or listen to, or taste, or whatever). They're also entitled to express them online.
2. Sometimes those opinions will be ones you don't like.
3. Sometimes those opinions won't be very nice.
4. The people expressing those may be (but are not always) assholes.
5. However, if your solution to this "problem" is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are almost certainly a bigger asshole.
6. You may also be twelve.
7. You are not responsible for anyone else's actions or karma, but you are responsible for your own.
8. So leave them alone and go about your own life."
[Bad Reviews: I Can Handle Them, and So Should You (Blog post, July 17, 2012)] — John Scalzi

Writing is exhilarating, but reading reviews is not. I've been really devastated by 'good' reviews because they misunderstand the project of the book. It can be strangely galvanising to get a 'bad' one. — Eleanor Catton

I was brought into the curiosity of it because with Sony Pictures Classics, which bought the movie, they look into what the feedback is and base that off of how they release it, and you end up hearing the feedback and getting that early talk. So the reviews early on that were "bad reviews," they were kind of reviewing another movie. — Don Cheadle

[about Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises] His characters are as shallow as the saucers in which they stack their daily emotions. — The New York Times

Frankly, anybody who's going to kill themselves because of a bad review has no business writing a novel in the first place. — Robert Galbraith

People adore bad reviews. Nobody would be interested in reading the good ones. — Jay Rayner

I live in the house bad reviews built. — Paul Stanley

I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness. — Charlie Kaufman

Even a bad review is still a review. It means someone cared enough to take the time to say: Hey, this sucks. Don't bother. Buy a DVD instead ... Yes, someone cared. And isn't that what every writer dreams of? ... So, how did I deal with bad reviews? How else? I cry. I get mad. I pretend not to care. Then I pour myself a glass of wine and call a friend to complain. — C.W. Gortner

[Leaves of Grass is] monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste. — Henry James

I am not very relaxed about bad reviews. But I am resilient. I grieve, curse and swear, put on loud music, and get on with the next job. — Simon Schama

One cannot review a bad book without showing off. — W. H. Auden

I get a sick joy out of bad reviews. I don't read good reviews. — Evan Goldberg

Then I realized that I was falling victim to one of the fallacies of the bad reviewer (whose habits we already discussed at length in yesterday's commentary). I was wishing that Hamid had written a different book than he had. How I might have written this story is completely irrelevant. It would be like dismissing The Godfather because I wished it were a musical. The novel needs to be considered on its own terms. — Kevin Guilfoile

I don't read reviews, because if you believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad. — Kelli O'Hara

I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews. — Werner Herzog

In contrast to the notion that any publicity is good publicity, negative reviews hurt sales for some books. But for books by new or relatively unknown authors, negative reviews increased sales by 45%.... Even a bad review or negative word of mouth can increase sales if it informs or reminds people that the product or idea exists. — Jonah Berger

I'm not one to get bad reviews. — Prince

My early reviews were so bad that I decided I didn't want to read them again. — Danielle Steel

I don't read reviews, There's no value for me in reading them. Whether they're good or bad, they'll just make me self-conscious. — Mary Stuart Masterson

The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review. — John Sutherland

I really don't want somebody writing something positive about me if they don't believe in it. I'd rather somebody write something real mean. I like reading bad stuff, it gets me excited. In fact, the only reviews I keep are the bad ones 'cause I think they're the cool ones. — Patti Smith

So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead. — Dorothy Parker

In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out. — Gail Sheehy

I'm only ... I'm only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I'm a ... I'm just screaming all over the place with joy. — Alan King

For instance, 'The Sixth Sense' had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention. — M. Night Shyamalan

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it. — Moses Hadas

Getting bad reviews or doing something that's not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that I've earned my stripes a bit. — Greta Gerwig

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. — Mark Twain

Self editing is the path to the dark side. Self editing leads to self delusion, self delusion leads to missed mistakes, missed mistakes lead to bad reviews. Bad reviews are the tools of the dark side. — Eric T. Benoit

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.
American novels, answered Lord Henry. — Oscar Wilde

I can't stay mad very long. I get grumpy when I read a bad review. I say, 'How could he say that about my music?' Then I forget about it. If I got mad every time somebody wrote something negative about me, I'd be exploding all the time. I'd be burned out just from reading reviews. — Julian Lennon

If you're not getting any bad reviews, you're not taking enough risks — Susan Egan

Each year comes with its own memories! Memories that make us ponder! Memories that shake our nerves and thought to think about things we did, things we could have done, things we should have done, the right time and timing for the yes and no we could have say with courage or humility, the right time and timing of our steps and things we should have never done! When you remember the year, you remember something! Something good or something bad! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

An oxymoronic combination of the tough and tender, [Of Mice and Men] will appeal to sentimental cynics, cynical sentimentalists ... Readers less easily thrown off their trolley will still prefer Hans Andersen.
[Time 1937] — Time-Life Books

Every writer prefers good reviews over bad ones, and every writer wants to have lots of readers. But if it doesn't happen, that's fine too. Perhaps I won't throw a party then; I'll simply go home and keep writing. — J.K. Rowling

The worst reviews, by my mind, are those from individuals who enjoy entertaining themselves by writing something bad about books they actually never read, which is as clear as day from what they're saying. It's even more puzzling for an author to check some of these "honest" reviewers' pages and see that they created their profile with one goal in mind; to post you a bad review, as there's nothing else they wanted to rate. — Sahara Sanders

And then they started deleting the protest reviews.
That was my line. When they started to stamp out dissent, actually to make it disappear with virtually no excuse for doing so ... that's not neglect. That's not an overwhelmed person or people trying to figure it out. That's an entity that has decided that they do not care, that they have moved on from the issue, do not see it as an issue, and is trying to avoid bad press. Or they are too far down the line to backtrack on what they've been doing and save face. They're content with their wildly inconsistent policy enough to no longer care what effect it is having on their user base.
If you try to silence dissent, then something is very, very wrong. — G.R. Reader

I collect all the reviews of the films I turned down. And when they're bad - I have to smile. — Simone Signoret

Beware of the man who denounces woman writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell. — Erica Jong

I've done both theatre and film and the fact is if you start believing, if you start reading things and they're good reviews - you believe that and you're lost, and then you read bad reviews and you think that's true and you read that and you're lost. — Jenny Agutter

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split. — Kurt Vonnegut

Bad reviews come with everything. I've been getting them my whole life. — Will Friedle

I've never had a movie that got great reviews. I've had movies that got different levels of good and bad reviews, but you can more or less count on plenty of bad reviews. — Wes Anderson

In Heaven all reviews will be favorable; here on earth, the publisher realizes, plausibility demands an occasional bad one, some convincing lump in all that leaven, and he accepts it somewhat as a theologian accepts Evil. — Randall Jarrell

The reviewer's view knew not of the true part of the writer's view, so good or bad, do not brew, and let them through to another part of you. — Mark Donnelly

All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one. — Irwin Shaw

Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have been read for more than half a century by millions of people, in spite of, or most likely thanks to, brutally nasty reviews and attempts to discredit her. The first-order information is the intensity: what matters is the effort the critic puts into trying to prevent others from reading the book, or, more generally in life, it is the effort in badmouthing someone that matters, not so much what is said. So if you really want people to read a book, tell them it is "overrated," with a sense of outrage (and use the attribute "underrated" for the opposite effect). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason. — Barry Hannah

All reviews should carry a Surgeon General's warning. The good ones turn your head, the bad ones break your heart. — David Ives

WAKE
Dealing with an alcoholic single mother and endless hours of working at Heather Nursing Home to raise money for college, high-school senior Janie Hannagan doesn't need more problems. But inexplicably, since she was eight years old, she has been pulled in to people's dreams, witnessing their recurring fears, fantasies and secrets. Through Miss Stubin at Heather Home, Janie discovers that she is a dream catcher with the ability to help others resolve their haunting dreams. After taking an interest in former bad boy Cabel, she must distinguish between the monster she sees in his nightmares and her romantic feelings for him. And when she learns more about Cabel's covert identity, Janie just may be able to use her special dream powers to help solve crimes in a suspense-building ending with potential for a sequel. McMann lures teens in by piquing their interest in the mysteries of the unknown, and keeps them with quick-paced, gripping narration and supportive characters. — Lisa McMann

The funny thing is that some reviews are published in magazines and websites that are seen by millions of people, and other reviews are in very small publications or less popular websites, and you just have to be lucky to have the good reviews land in places where more people see them, and bad reviews land in places where they will be less seen. — Jeffrey Lewis