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The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.

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)
Committees
State
States

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I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.
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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.
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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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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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How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.
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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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Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.
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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.
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The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
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There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.
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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.
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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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A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
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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.
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.
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Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
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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.
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The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
V. S. Pritchett
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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.
V. S. Pritchett