A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch. - Kingsley Amis

[W]e're all trapped in a sort of conspiracy to pretend everybody's forgiven everybody else and nobody minds anything any more and we all know life's not like that but what can we do?

We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it.

As soon as originality became important, the days of artistic merit or excellence were numbered.