We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened. — V. S. Pritchett Business Copy Share Image
Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism. — V. S. Pritchett Art Copy Share Image
We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness. — V. S. Pritchett Action Copy Share Image
The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact… — V. S. Pritchett Art Copy Share Image
It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously… — V. S. Pritchett Art Copy Share Image
It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more… — V. S. Pritchett Beautiful writing Copy Share Image
One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist… — V. S. Pritchett Academic Copy Share Image
The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel. — V. S. Pritchett Autobiography Copy Share Image
Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic… One lives in… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
[London] is sentimental and tolerant. The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: Dogs are neither human nor British, but… — V. S. Pritchett Amusing Copy Share Image
The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour… — V. S. Pritchett Books Copy Share Image
Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning.… — V. S. Pritchett Cameras Copy Share Image
The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves,… — V. S. Pritchett Giving Copy Share Image
The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
Absolute Evil is not the kingdom of hell. The inhabitants of hell are ourselves, i.e., those who pay our painful, embarrassing, humanistic… — V. S. Pritchett Absolutes Copy Share Image
The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony. — V. S. Pritchett Congenial Copy Share Image
Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress. — V. S. Pritchett Actresses Copy Share Image
Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story. — V. S. Pritchett Criticism Copy Share Image
The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive. — V. S. Pritchett Assertive Copy Share Image
A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10. — V. S. Pritchett Language Copy Share Image
In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of… — V. S. Pritchett Art Copy Share Image
All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
![“[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic… One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like…” quote by V. S. Pritchett](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/692/v-s-pritchett-13789_asphalt_london-is-like-the-sight-of-a-heavy-sea_2888600.jpg)
![“[London] is sentimental and tolerant. The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: Dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters…” quote by V. S. Pritchett](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/113/v-s-pritchett-13789_amusing_london-is-sentimental-and-tolerant-the-a_1997079.jpg)
