The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths. — 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 himself as a work of art. — 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
Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive. — 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 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 with the… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point. — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel. — V. S. Pritchett 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 a stuffed… — V. S. Pritchett Copy Share Image
