Chekhov on critics

"Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing of the soil...the muscles of the horse are as taut as fiddle-strings, and suddenly a horse-fly alights on his croup, buzzing and stinging. The horse's skin quivers, it waves its tail. What is the fly buzzing about? It probably doesn't know itself. It simply has a restless nature and wants to make itself felt - 'I'm alive too, you know!' it seems to say. 'Look, I know how to buzz, there's nothing I can't buzz about!' I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and I can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice."

A quote ascribed to Chekhov from Maxim Gorky's 'On Literature,' 1956