Quote

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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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)
Running
Aliens
Ideas
Mines
Long
Mine
People
Beginning
Nourishing
Whose
Identifying
Passion
Governed
Lives
Alien
Felt
Hopeless

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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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Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.
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We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.
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The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
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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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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
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A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
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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.
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We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.
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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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The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
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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.
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Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
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Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.
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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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There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.
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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 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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Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
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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.
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