Good Reviews Quotes

“All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.”

— Irwin Shaw

“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

“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 will say that over the years I've been associated with things that were well-reviewed that I wasn't particularly crazy about, and I've been in things that didn't get very good reviews that I was rather fond of.”

— James LeGros

“I don't read good reviews. I like to know what percentages are going on. When Sony sends out something saying that people are liking the movie, I like to know that, but I don't actually sit and read the good stuff.”

— Evan Goldberg

“On the first movie we got good reviews, but we were still dealing with genre stuff. It's going away. Judge the movie - is it a good one or a bad one? We know we made a great movie and it's being judged for just being a good film.”

— Avi Arad

“It's like obituaries, when you die they finally give you good reviews.”

— Roger Maris

“At one level, an award is an endorsement, a confirmation, but I always find myself looking askance at awards and good reviews, as though another Garry Disher had earned them.”

— Garry Disher

“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

“To me, I read good reviews in lots of papers and bad reviews in lots of papers.”

— Sheila Nevins

“I really do hope that the people will like 14:59. The critics seem to like it. We got a lot of good reviews.”

— Mark McGrath

“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

“My debut feature, 'The Baby-Sitters Club,' got good reviews and made good money for what it cost. But it took me six years to get to direct my second feature. I think a guy would have had another movie out the same year.”

— Melanie Mayron

“In the case of 'Goon Squad,' which sold slowly for a long time despite the good reviews, those 'best of 2010' lists were pivotal, and made the book really sell.”

— Jennifer Egan

“I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a job in TV.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

“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

“It's weird being an author because it's different than writing songs. You put so much more of yourself out there to be judged because it's a memoir. So when the reviews come in, they all feel really personal. Some people are just going to hate you no matter what. Personally, I never believe good reviews.”

— Dean Wareham

“It's always good to get good reviews. I read my reviews. There are a lot of writers who don't read their reviews at all. I read them; then I put them away because it's not good to engage with them too much.”

— Neel Mukherjee

“I always had a trunk full of good reviews. I'd get magnificent reviews, and I'd be standing out on the unemployment line!”

— Diane Ladd

“I don't pay much attention to the press. My films always get good reviews and bad reviews. I just try to make the best film I can.”

— Paul Haggis

“I don't really make movies because I want to see my face on a billboard or because I want to get good reviews or have a big box office. That doesn't really matter to me at all.”

— Joaquin Phoenix

“If I stop to think about fans, or best-selling, or not best-selling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It's like staring at the mirror all day.”

— Jhumpa Lahiri

“I've had movies bomb with terrible reviews, I've had movies make a lot of money with terrible reviews, I've had movies get good reviews and make money. And I like it best when the movies do well and the reviewers like them.”

— Judd Apatow

“I don't generally do movies that get good reviews.”

— Seann William Scott

“I'm probably my own harshest critic. If I get a hundred good reviews and one really bad one, it's that one out of a hundred that I remember. I think we actors are hard on ourselves, and I don't know why that is.”

— Tim Daly

“But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism.”

— Fiona Apple

“The good reviews that people have told me about through the years haven't really helped me do my job. So it's kind of like, if your hair turns out right you want to go out, you don't just want to stay in and look in the mirror. That's kind of what reading a review is like to me; it's like reveling in something that's just one night.”

— Val Kilmer

“In the controversy that followed the prince's remarks, his most staunch defender was professor John Taylor, a scholar whose work I had last noticed when he gave good reviews to the psychokinetic (or whatever) capacities of the Israeli conjuror and fraud Uri Geller. The heir to the throne seems to possess the ability to surround himself-perhaps by some mysterious ultramagnetic force?-with every moon-faced spoon-bender, shrub-flatterer, and water-diviner within range.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself.”

— Edward Albee

“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

“I am not so concerned with how many Rotten Tomatoes we have - although the good reviews are to be wished for, of course - but I have my hands full in the daily housekeeping of doing Maura right and being truthful to this experience.”

— Jeffrey Tambor

“I get a sick joy out of bad reviews. I don't read good reviews.”

— Evan Goldberg

“A life without purpose is like a novel without a plot. It wanders all over the place, is hard to follow, and in the end, doesn't get particularly good reviews.”

— Mardy Grothe

“No movie becomes a hit without good reviews and word-of-mouth. No agency ever became a great brand by merely saying it was great - in advertising or by any other medium.”

— Rochelle B Lazarus

“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

“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

“When my stories were translated into other languages and received good reviews in the international press and won prizes, some Arab festivals and newspapers began to take an interest in what I had produced. This sudden Arab interest is a form of hypocrisy and nonsense.”

— Hassan Blasim

“I mean when the book first came out it was not a bestseller, but it got good reviews and at that point I was done writing about Andy, done talking about Andy ... but now, I kind of love it. All these smart, attractive young people think I'm cool! So here I am a guy in his sixties with all of these interesting friends in their twenties. It's very stimulating and keeps me very much in the present.”

— Bob Colacello

“You read some good reviews and then you read a bad one, and the bad one pisses you off but there's nothing you can do. It's just an opinion.”

— Simon Taylor-Davis

“I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore. There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. I've learned to despise them.”

— John Grisham

“If you read the good reviews you gotta read the bad reviews. I kind of think of it as like being a quarterback: you get way too much blame when it's bad and way too much credit when it's good.”

— David Fincher

“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

“Donald Trump foreign policy speech got good reviews, and it says we're going to defeat the people who are direct threats to us, but we're going to be a lot more cautious about getting involved in long-term, Wilsonian adventures.”

— Jeff Sessions

“You know, I can't remember my good reviews. I remember negative ones. They stay in my mind.”

— Barbra Streisand

“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

“I don't want any description of me to be accurate; I want it to be flattering. I don't think people who have to sing for their supper ever like to be described truthfully - not in print anyway. We need to sell tickets, so we need good reviews.”

— Orson Welles

“People always think I get really good reviews, but I don't. That's why I don't go on the Internet much - because you can go down a dark hole looking at stuff. Once, I clicked on my name and freaked out. It's too bizarre, it's too weird, it's too unsettling.”

— Tim Burton

“The worst thing you can do is make a cult movie. That means you got three great reviews and nobody went. An art film means it got a lot of good reviews and nobody went. There is no such thing as a counter culture now. What used to be considered that is commercial now.”

— John Waters

“I am good in the fact that most of my reviews have been very positive really. I get pretty good reviews. There have been some that aren't - critical. I think they are extremely - the people that wrote them really don't understand what they are looking at quite frankly or have a very preconceived notion of what conceptual art should be or where I am at or the fact that I may change what I have done from what I did 20 years ago. But there is always some reason that they just sort of get it wrong. And so it certainly doesn't affect my work.”

— Robert Barry

“I mean, I understand that Scrubs was my big break, but sooner or later you have to move on. I've already directed a movie, which received very good reviews, so it just seems much more important to me now. I feel that in order to better foster my creativity as an actor and director at this point, I need to be surrounded by other talented, artistic individuals, instead of just goofy comedians.”

— Zach Braff