“There is one thing that 99 percent of all critics share with one another: they are failures. I don’t mean failures as critics—my God, that’s understood. I don’t even mean they are failures as people; I mean something more painful by far: These people are failures in life.
“It’s a second-rate job, folks. Being a drama critic on Broadway wouldn’t keep a decent mind occupied 10% of the time. So you don’t even get second-raters. You get the dregs, the stage-struck but untalented neurotic who eventually drifts into criticism as a means of clinging peripherally to the arts. And most of your cruel critics come this way: they are getting their own back.”
William Goldman, <I>The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway</I> (courtesy of Jason Zinoman)