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

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)
Ruled
Spell
Spells
Since
Language

More quotes by 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.
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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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The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.
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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 Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
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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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Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.
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Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.
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It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.
V. S. Pritchett
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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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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.
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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
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It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.
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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.
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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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
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A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
V. S. Pritchett
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Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
V. S. Pritchett
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We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
V. S. Pritchett