One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

The remark expresses a caustic, hierarchical view of cultural production: genuine creation (the artist) is placed above evaluation (the critic), and criticism is framed as a compensatory role adopted by those who lack the capacity to make art themselves. The second comparison—likening the critic to a “stool pigeon” (an informer) who cannot be a soldier—intensifies the insult by suggesting not merely inadequacy but a kind of betrayal: the failed participant turns into someone who judges, reports on, or undermines the real combatants. Read this way, the line is less a balanced theory of criticism than a polemical jab, reflecting the perennial tension between creators and their reviewers.