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All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.

V. S. Pritchett

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V. S. Pritchett
Age: 96 †
Born: 1900
Born: December 16
Died: 1997
Died: March 20
Biographer
Critic
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Ipswich (parish)
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Memory
Legends
People
Private
Collection
Writers
Toys
Memories
Collections
Lying
Floor
Half
Stores
Family
Violent
Often
Forgotten

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I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose lives were governed by ideas alien to mine.
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The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.
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The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
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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 at home, and he can spend his life preparing without fuss for the awful interview.
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The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.
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Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
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We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
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It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.
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[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 interesting.
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It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?
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The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
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Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.
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A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
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One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.
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Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning. The camera brings them to our eyes, but does not settle them in our minds, nor in time.
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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.
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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
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The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.
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A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
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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.
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