Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.
V. S. Pritchett
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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)
Yawning
Detective
Detectives
Sake
Art
Stories
Philistinism
More quotes by V. S. Pritchett
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
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
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 life it pretends to build on.
V. S. Pritchett
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
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
The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.
V. S. Pritchett
The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.
V. S. Pritchett
I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.
V. S. Pritchett
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.
V. S. Pritchett
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.
V. S. Pritchett
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
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
How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.
V. S. Pritchett
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 can be, the better.
V. S. Pritchett
[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.
V. S. Pritchett
A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
V. S. Pritchett
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
It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.
V. S. Pritchett
The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
V. S. Pritchett
Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.
V. S. Pritchett
