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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.

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)
Always
Taste
Helplessly
Use
Declining
Away
Plane
Order
Planes
Give
Lower
Giving
Popular
Great
Writers
Good
Meet

More quotes by 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.
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We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
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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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I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.
V. S. Pritchett
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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 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 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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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 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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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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I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.
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.
V. S. Pritchett
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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
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It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.
V. S. Pritchett
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Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
V. S. Pritchett
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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
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
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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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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
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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.
V. S. Pritchett