"Critics do not need, nor should they need, any more permission than the work being made public to share their thoughts about the work. That’s the beauty of the First Amendment and the Fair Use Clause. It is not the responsibility of the critic to protect the feelings of the public artist, rather it is the artist who needs to aspire to making their work and themselves resistant to the machinations of the critic."
— TacoMagic of MST site Library of the Damned upon encountering a troublesome author during an MST of Peter Pan fic "A Questing We Go
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" "He (Oscar Hammerstein II) said, 'Now you want my opinion as though I really didn't know you? Well, it's the worst thing I've ever read.' And he probably saw that my lower lip began to tremble, and he said, 'Now, I didn't say it was untalented, I said it was terrible. And if you want to know why it's terrible I'll tell you.'" Hammerstein proceeded from the very first stage direction to go through every song, every scene, every line of dialogue. "At the risk of hyperbole," Sondheim recalls, "I'd say that in that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime."
— Stephen Sondheim describing his mentoring by Hammerstein (from Sondheim & Co. by Craig Zadan)
