It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened. V. S. Pritchett More Quotes by V. S. Pritchett More Quotes From V. S. Pritchett 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 roleslooksworld 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 yawningexampleart 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 emotioncreativeself 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 enoughmenart 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 violenceeyemind Absolute Evil is not the kingdom of hell. The inhabitants of hell are ourselves, i.e., those who pay our painful, embarrassing, humanistic duties to society and who are compromised by our intellectually dubious commitment to virtue, which can be defined by the perpetual smear-word of French polemic: the bourgeois. (Bourgeois equals humanist.) This word has long been anathema in France where categories are part of the ruling notion of logique. The word cannot be readily matched in England or America. V. S. Pritchett longamericacommitment 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 usegivingorder 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 contactthrivelosing There is more magic in sin if it is not committed. V. S. Pritchett magiccommittedsin A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point. V. S. Pritchett celebrationstoriescharacter 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. V. S. Pritchett academicusedpeople 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 bornenglandimportant It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else. V. S. Pritchett well-knowntalkingtwo Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game. V. S. Pritchett eyegamesschool The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it. V. S. Pritchett like-lovesuperstitionspeculiar 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. V. S. Pritchett memorieslyingpeople The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive. V. S. Pritchett assertivecautiousspirit Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere. V. S. Pritchett habitlifethinking [London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic.... One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings. V. S. Pritchett sightseadirty A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense. V. S. Pritchett tensenew-yorkersnatural
