Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
Interpretation
Critics often focus on finding faults in a work rather than appreciating it. This highlights the tendency to dwell on negatives.
Peter Ustinov's quote critiques the nature of critics, suggesting that they spend an inordinate amount of time looking for flaws in someone else's work, particularly fixating on a single 'wrong word' that might amount to a larger critique. This sheds light on the often negative focus of criticism, which can overshadow the positive aspects of creativity and expression.
In practice
In a discussion about artistic expression, this quote serves to remind us that critics often look for flaws rather than celebrating creativity.
Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don't get that.
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
Anyway, it's like with bikes,' said the first speaker authoritatively. 'I thought I was going to get this bike with seven gears and one of them razorblade saddles and purple paint and everything, and they gave me this light blue one. With a basket. A girl's bike.' 'Well. You're a girl,' said one of the others. 'That's sexism, that is. Going around giving people girly presents just because they're a girl.
Somebody once asked me how I found Peter Jackson, and I said: 'Well, I parted his hair, and there he was.'
Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
Everyone has a photographic Memory, some just don't have film.
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