This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Critics are already made.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

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

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.