Quote

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent but there is talent in the tongues.

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)
Often
Tongues
Ireland
Excess
Tongue
Genius
Talent

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
[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
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
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
Image
Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
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
A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
Image
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
V. S. Pritchett
Image
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
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
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
Image
A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
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