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We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.

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)
Fully
Wish
Better

More quotes by V. S. Pritchett

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Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
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 mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
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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Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.
V. S. Pritchett
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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
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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.
V. S. Pritchett
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The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
V. S. Pritchett
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It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.
V. S. Pritchett
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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
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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
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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
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I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.
V. S. Pritchett
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The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.
V. S. Pritchett
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It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.
V. S. Pritchett
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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.
V. S. Pritchett
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The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.
V. S. Pritchett
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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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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
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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
V. S. Pritchett