Criticism Aficionado Gifts

If you want to get big as a radio host, you've got to differentiate yourself from all the other mean, insulting critics. I have a plan. You need to start being nice. That way, you'll really surprise people when you turn on them. That's the stupidest @#$% Idea I've ever heard, you muscle-bound ape! It needs work. Damn. What if I retract the muscle-bound part?

King Henry and his Cheshire bride

Stephen Spender.

Gunter Grass

Sign in book shop window: 'Critics agree the book is much better than the movie.'

'Don't worry, you're safe. I started my diet today.'

Noel Coward.

Ironing Punctuation

Frontispiece to 'Dombey and Son'

"Wait, wait, back up, back up. Who the #!@! is George Orwell?"

My Literary Influences

'He speaks for our entire generation. Pity he's such a bore...'

Filling the Missile Gap

Sherlock Holmes Museum: No Hounds.

'Oh no! Is this a blogger I saw before me?'

'Excellent job, Fenwick, especially the part where you employ Magic Realism to fudge third-quarter earnings!'

'Nice, but it needs more angst.'

Library

"Well, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, but the rough beast found a piece of string so I don't know where that leaves us."

A vicar is reading 'The Great Begatsby' written by Abraham.

'I don't know whether to put it in for the Turner Prize or go for the Poet Laureate.'

An acceptable level of TV violence.

"You have to pick the places you don't walk away from."—Joan Didion, Penny, Joan Didion.

'Ignore them, Charlie. They're nothing but philistines. I liked your poetry, truly I did!'

Boardroom sacrifice - 'Then we agree - the shareholders don't have to know what transpired here today.'

Corporate Darwinism

Lord Byron

Samuel Beckett

The Real Russian history

Seamus Heaney

"Don Wood? I don't know any Don Wood!"

"Well...I notice a little criticism on my leadership style..."

"But think of the S.E.O. if the title actually named the two cities."

"...and to save you time, anything I say that comes back to haunt me, was something taken out of context."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez.