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The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.

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)
Hopeless
Humorous
Writers
Life
Uncouth
Responsive
Profoundly

More quotes by V. S. Pritchett

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A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
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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.
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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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I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.
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It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.
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Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
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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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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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We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.
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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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The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.
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It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.
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The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
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The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
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There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.
V. S. Pritchett
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The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.
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It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent but there is talent in the tongues.
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On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.
V. S. Pritchett
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A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
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Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.
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