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“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Sid Ziff

“This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."

[Women Know Everything!]”
― Dorothy Parker

“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”
― kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”
― Oscar Wilde

“So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.”
― Moses Hadas

“Beware of the man who denounces woman writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell.”
― Erica Jong

“She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”
― Mark Twain

“To me [Edgar Allan Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.”
― Mark Twain

“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
(writing about US President Warren G. Harding)”
― H.L. Mencken

“Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain

“What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."

(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)”
― Salman Rushdie

“While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw—that of outright unreadability.”
― Martin Amis, The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000

“Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.”
― Mark Twain

“What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.

American novels, answered Lord Henry.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

“I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children.”
― Mark Twain

“There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”
― Mark Twain

“On a book by Henry James: "Once you put it down, you simply can't pick it up.”
― Mark Twain

“I obsess over the possibility of bad reviews and brood over them when they come. But they don't get me down for long; I just kill a few children and old ladies, and then I'm right as a trivet again...”
― Stephen King, Four Past Midnight

“Without ever meaning to, my father taught me at a very early age to give up on the idea of approval. I wish I could bottle that freedom now and give it to every young writer I meet, with an extra bottle for the women.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

“Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. -- Mark Twain, speaking of Jane Austen”
― PBS, The Great American Read: The Book of Books: Explore America's 100 Best-Loved Novels

“A cow has no control over the quality of its lick”
― Eugene Wrayburn MD, Battered Doctor Syndrome

“- Ni kanske inte läsa de böcker ni recensera?
- Vem tror du har tid att läsa böcker? Är det inte nog att man skriver om dem! Man läser tidningarna och det är tillräckligt! För övrigt ha vi för princip att rappa alla!
- Ja, men det är ju en dum princip.
- Nix! Därigenom fÃ¥r man alla författares ovänner och avundsmän med sig - och dÃ¥ har man ju majoritet. De neutrala läsa hellre ovett om andra än de läsa beröm! Det ligger nÃ¥got uppbyggligt och trösterikt för den obemärkte att se hur törnig berömmelsens väg är! Inte sant?”
― August Strindberg, Röda Rummet

“Warner’s guard senses had begun to tingle.
Warner’s guard-senses had been steadily tingling throughout this conversation.”
― John Morey, Card Snake

“Stop her!" Hal shouted. "She's convincing people!”
― John Morey, Card Snake