Quote

Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative criticism isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, writerly cliché and invective.

Renata Adler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Renata Adler
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 19
Author
Film Critic
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Milano
Italia
Brett Daniels
Nasty
Tells
Criticism
Negative
Nice
Something
Writerly
Good
Invective
Clich

More quotes by Renata Adler

Image
My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.
Renata Adler
Image
The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.
Renata Adler
Image
The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.
Renata Adler
Image
Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.
Renata Adler
Image
Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away?
Renata Adler
Image
Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.
Renata Adler
Image
Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.
Renata Adler
Image
the time for prizes and competitions at art festivals is over. Competition is too closely tied to values that are alien to the arts.
Renata Adler
Image
Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.
Renata Adler
Image
A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.
Renata Adler
Image
No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.
Renata Adler
Image
The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.
Renata Adler
Image
I took a little celebrational nap.
Renata Adler
Image
I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.
Renata Adler
Image
I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number.
Renata Adler
Image
Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.
Renata Adler
Image
There is a difference, of course, between real sentiment and the trash of shared experience.
Renata Adler
Image
Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.
Renata Adler
Image
Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.
Renata Adler
Image
My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.
Renata Adler