It's important not to censor yourself and not to get upset or demoralized when you write bad stuff.

The first modern novel was already a product, even an expression, of negative criticism: 'Don Quixote' contains a quite explicit critique of the chivalric romance and its insufficiency to account for the way real life feels when you get up in the morning in 17th-century Spain.

The one text that most changed my opinion on criticism was probably Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams,' which I read in college.

Elif Batuman Quotes