"All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one"
About this Quote
Shaw’s line lands because it pretends to be generous to the entire tribe of writers while quietly indicting them. “All writers” is the bait: a broad, almost comic generalization that feels true enough to sting. Then he snaps it into a precise psychological portrait. The math is absurd on purpose - “a thousand” versus “one” - because the point isn’t accuracy, it’s the grotesque imbalance of attention. Praise is background noise; criticism is plot.
The intent isn’t just to complain about reviewers. It’s to expose the writer’s dependence on an external verdict, and the humiliation baked into that dependence. The subtext: you can publish a book, tour, smile for photos, act like a professional, and still be privately governed by a single sentence from a stranger. Shaw, a novelist and screenwriter who lived inside the machinery of mid-century publishing and Hollywood, understood how public judgment becomes an occupational hazard. When your work is also your self, every negative review arrives as evidence in a case you didn’t know you were still trying.
What makes the line work is its dry fatalism. There’s no advice, no self-help pivot, just recognition of a compulsion: writers don’t “choose” to remember the bad one; they’re built to. It’s a survival trait turned neurosis. The same sensitivity that detects a wrong note in a paragraph also hears insult louder than applause. Shaw turns that contradiction into a tight little joke, and the joke doesn’t let anyone off the hook.
The intent isn’t just to complain about reviewers. It’s to expose the writer’s dependence on an external verdict, and the humiliation baked into that dependence. The subtext: you can publish a book, tour, smile for photos, act like a professional, and still be privately governed by a single sentence from a stranger. Shaw, a novelist and screenwriter who lived inside the machinery of mid-century publishing and Hollywood, understood how public judgment becomes an occupational hazard. When your work is also your self, every negative review arrives as evidence in a case you didn’t know you were still trying.
What makes the line work is its dry fatalism. There’s no advice, no self-help pivot, just recognition of a compulsion: writers don’t “choose” to remember the bad one; they’re built to. It’s a survival trait turned neurosis. The same sensitivity that detects a wrong note in a paragraph also hears insult louder than applause. Shaw turns that contradiction into a tight little joke, and the joke doesn’t let anyone off the hook.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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