V. S. Pritchett
V. S. Pritchett
Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett CH CBE, was a British writer and literary critic...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth16 December 1900
spiritual greed mind
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
spirit assertive cautious
The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.
guilt sin feels
How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.
humorous hopeless uncouth
The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.
personality youth periods
Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.
dog attitude character
[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.
writing stories novelists
The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.
queens actresses mixtures
Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
natural tense native
A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
dirty glasses sight
[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.
writing suicidal home
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.
looks world roles
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.
order giving use
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.
far happened
In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.