I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much about them. I do read them, and I do care about them, and they're not always what you want them to be in an ideal world.
Interpretation
Writers often do care about reviews, despite claiming otherwise, and those reviews can be unexpectedly critical.
In this quote, Tom Stoppard expresses the common struggle among writers regarding the opinion of critics and readers. He acknowledges that while many writers may proclaim indifference towards reviews, the truth is that they are deeply affected by them, especially when feedback diverges from their expectations. The candidness in his admission highlights the inherent vulnerability of creatives who seek validation in their work, emphasizing that acceptance of critique is part of the artistic journey.
In practice
In a panel discussion about the impact of reviews on writers' mental health.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
Music television is all about the media-oriented version of what it is to be a rock star; it's not about what Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix were about - which included great images, sure, but they had spiritual and political and revolutionary content, too.
I was interested in ideas, not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.
I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.
Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.
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