Quote

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

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)
Yorker
Tense
Native
Present
Natural

More quotes by V. S. Pritchett

Image
How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
Image
[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
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 am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
Image
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.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
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
I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.
V. S. Pritchett