All V. S. Pritchett Quotes
- The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists. Been
- Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story… Bare
- [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… Amusing
- Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere. Assumed
- All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on… All
- Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind. Enlarges
- The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life. Concatenations
- It's all in the art. You get no credit for living. All
- How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit. Commit
- The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive. American
- Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere. Curious
- Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story. Changes
- Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing. Alike
- It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful? Believe
- It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening. Happening
- A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale. Bogus
- We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness. Action
- The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the lady is not… Able
- Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism. Art
- The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony. Congenial
- In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth. Born