Quote

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.

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)
Ruled
Spell
Spells
Since
Language

More quotes by V. S. Pritchett

Image
It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.
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
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
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
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
Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.
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
One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
Image
We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
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
[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
It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.
V. S. Pritchett