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There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.

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)
Committed
Sin
Magic

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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.
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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.
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The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
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Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.
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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.
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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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[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.
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It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.
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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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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.
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Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
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The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
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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.
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Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.
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Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
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Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
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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.
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Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.
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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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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.
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