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A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.

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)
Yorker
Tense
Native
Present
Natural

More quotes by V. S. Pritchett

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The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
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Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.
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Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.
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Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.
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The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
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Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
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The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.
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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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There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.
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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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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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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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Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
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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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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
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Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one's virginity,it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.
V. S. Pritchett
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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
V. S. Pritchett
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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.
V. S. Pritchett
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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.
V. S. Pritchett
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We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.
V. S. Pritchett