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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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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)
Novel
Specialized
Example
Detective
Art
Detectives
Form
Removed
Life
Classic
Contact
Philistinism
Sake
Yawning
Build
Pretends

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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.
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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.
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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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Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
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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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We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
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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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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
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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 exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?
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We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.
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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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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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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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There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.
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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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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.
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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 mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
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It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.
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