But I honestly don’t read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can’t hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism.

Apple describes a deliberate strategy of emotional self-protection: refusing to consume criticism at all, even when it is positive. The logic is that treating praise as authoritative makes negative judgments equally authoritative, tethering one’s self-worth and artistic direction to external evaluation. By outsourcing the monitoring of reviews to her father—who relays them—she acknowledges the existence of reception while keeping a boundary between her creative life and the critical marketplace. The quote reflects a broader artist’s dilemma: attention can validate, but it can also distort, encouraging work aimed at approval rather than honesty.