The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the v...
There's no such thing as great art or poor art. Art is subjective expression. As such, it can be judged only as popular or unpopular. What is banned in Boston may one day receive a million-dollar bid at Christie's. Art has, therefore, no use for crit...
Having worked in disasters, I have seen that, in those critical first few hours, those first few days - so much ends up riding on you and your neighbor and whoever is around. The official response always comes later, and it always feels like it comes...
Your function as a critic is to show that it is really you yourself who should have written the book, if you had had the time, and since you hadn't you are glad that someone else had, although obviously it might have been done better.
The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible...
I am passionately invested in the survival of Israel and everything Israel represents. But I am extremely critical of much of its policy. I believe that the occupation must end. And if it doesn't, it will end Israel. I'm not in favor of settlements.
If I don't like someone and I start reading their stuff, it seems like my brain will just automatically start criticizing everything that's there. It's really hard to read a book without having all this outside information telling you what to think a...
The next question is how? How does news find us? What you need is a certain critical literacy about the fact that you are almost always subject to an algorithm. The most powerful thing in your world now is an algorithm about which you know nothing ab...
Critics? How do they happen? I know how it happened to me. I would send a poem or story to a magazine and they would say this doesn't suit our needs precisely but on the other hand you sound interesting. Would you be interested in doing a review?
What drove us crazy wasn't necessarily the sexual freedom his critic claimed he was unleashing, but freedom, period. Freedom to be yourself, to express yourself, to wear what you wanted to wear, to look the way you wanted to look, to have your own st...
Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that's when the damage gets done and if we don't keep that historical memory, we will allow them to do it again next time.
So when we're really addressing issues like poverty, you can't do that without addressing the real driver of some of those, which is stable homes, families. So that's why to me those issues are important. They're not frivolous. They're critical econo...
All of the films that I've made are about the country I live in and grew up in... And I think if you're going to put an artist's eye to it, you're going to put a critical eye to it. I've always been interested in the gray area that exists between the...
Shellac was asked to do a recreation of our first album, but we've always been a band that improvised our sets. That's critical to the way that we function on stage. Whatever the mood takes us on stage can vary from night to night with what you feel ...
'Mrs. Doubtfire' is still a fun movie, and it's still fun to watch, but it is hard to watch myself sometimes. I get very critical. And people will say, 'Mara, you were five.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, but I still should have known better!' I'm a lifelong ...
Qatar-based 'Al-Jazeera,' the most important news channel in the Arab world, was harshly criticized by high U.S. officials for having 'emphasized civilian casualties' during the destruction of Falluja. The problem of independent media was later resol...
I was bashing Israel in the past because nobody else was exposing its true record. Many people are doing it now, so I switched hats from a critic of Israel to a diplomat who wants to resolve the conflict. I have not changed, but I think the spectrum ...
America's critics can be heard everywhere. It is too much in love with money - worshipping the god of the marketplace, the golden calf. It has too much money, seven of the top 10 banks, eight of the top 10 companies etc. It is too stingy, giving away...
Cinema builds memories; great films continue to exist in the spectator's mind. We are naturally capable of and prone to nostalgia. A spectator will reconstruct a film he or she has seen, years later, and may even change their original opinion. One cr...
I'm a good son, a good father, a good husband - I've been married to the same woman for 30 years. I'm a good friend. I finished college, I have my education, I donate money anonymously. So when people criticize the kind of characters that I play on s...
I used to tweet, but it's an act of futility. You're not really making any impact, and if you find yourself in a mood when you wanna be a bit controversial and you post something, you suddenly realise, 'Oh my God!' because you've opened yourself up t...
