Paulo Coelho’s Blog

By Paulo Coelho

I use to receive some emails from readers that feel personally insulted when they read a bad review on my books.

First of all, I thank you for your solidarity.

Second: don’t take the critics too seriously!

Just ask: “if you can do better, why don’t you write a book?”

I am used to bad reviews (mostly Brazilian and French, because I use to commute between these two wonderful countries), and after 20 years of writing, I came to some few conclusions that helped a lot in my books. In “The Zahir”, the main character knows already, even before his book is published, what critics are going to say.

And they say always the same thing – regardless the title or the plot of my new book. I have a funny collection of these reviews that one day I may post in my blogs.

It is not up to me to criticize the critics – I am a writer. At the end of the day, I believe that every critic wanted to be a writer. When I meet one of them (and I meet them very often) they are normally embarrassed. They try to be nice, as if I was insulted. They are normally surprised with my reaction ( “I don’t take your comments as a personal offense”).

Why am I writing this? Because I am convinced that most of you also feel hurt when someone criticizes your work. As I said before, don’t take critics too seriously. They don’t have the power to make (or to avoid) someone buying a book, a CD, or to go to an exhibition. Don’t give them the importance they don’t have. They are trying to make a living, and that’s all.

If I did not manage to convince you, please read the comments below:

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway. ~ Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her. ~ David Brinkley

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world. ~ Edmond and Jules De Goncourt

To escape criticism — do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. ~ Elbert Hubbard

It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper. ~ Errol Flynn

If criticism had any power to harm, the skunk would be extinct by now. ~ Fred Allen

Don’t be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind. ~ Hamilton Mabie

Before you criticize people, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away. And you have their shoes. ~ JK Lambert

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy. ~ Jean Baudrillard

There is no defense against criticism except obscurity. ~ Joseph Addison

I have always been very fond of them (drama critics) . . . I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it. ~ Noel Coward

Sticks and stones are hard on bones, aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart.
~ Phyllis McGinley

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. ~ Samuel Johnson

If any human being earnestly desire to push on to new discoveries instead of just retaining and using the old; to win victories over Nature as a worker rather than over hostile critics as a disputant; to attain , in fact, clear and demonstrative knowlegde instead of attractive and probable theory; we invite him as a true son of Science to join our ranks. ~Sir Francis Bacon

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves. ~ Brendan Francis Behan

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