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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

More quotes by V. S. Pritchett

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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 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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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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How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.
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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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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.
V. S. Pritchett
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A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
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Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
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The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
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Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.
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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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Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
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.
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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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Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
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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The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
V. S. Pritchett
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Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.
V. S. Pritchett
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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
V. S. Pritchett