Quotes by V. S. Pritchett

“The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony.”

“In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.”

“A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.”

“The Canadian spirit is cautious observant and critical where the American is assertive.”

“Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.”

“Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.”

“The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.”

“The State that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.”

“The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all the great bestsellers.”

“The Canadian spirit is cautious observant and critical where the American is assertive.”

“The State that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Yes, well I had all my serious illnesses in late middle age. And now I'm just stuck, I'm afraid.”

“I found people were telling stories to themselves without knowing it. It seemed to me that people were living a sort of small sermon that they believed in, but at the same time it was a fairy tale....”

“The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.”

“Mass society destroys the things it is told are its inheritance. It is rarely possible to see the Abbey without being surrounded by thousands of tourists from all over the world. Like St. Peter's a...”

“Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.”

“How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.”

“In her businesslike way she thought that her life had begun when she was a very young woman and she really did look lovely: you knew it wouldn't last and you packed all you could into it — but men ...”