Quote

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.

V. S. Pritchett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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)
Turn
Depressing
Stop
Alike
Working
Sooner
Turns
Minute
Great
Later
Never
Minutes
Men
Lose
Loses

More quotes by V. S. Pritchett

Image
It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
Image
The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.
V. S. Pritchett
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
Image
We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent but there is talent in the tongues.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
Image
Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
Image
I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.
V. S. Pritchett
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 to me.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.
V. S. Pritchett