V. S. Pritchett

“Conversation is the wall we build between ourselves and other people, too often with the intention of keeping them out.”

“Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.”

“A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.”

“The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt gained day by day.”

“Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.”

“In middle life, the human back is a discontented tortoise that has gone on strike in the middle of the road and refuses to carry its burden any further.”

“London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its parks and green spaces.”

“Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the life of the writer as a person and the writer's life as a writer.”

“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”

“He had a suspicion of plausible people; he looked for the cloven hoof.”

“It is the privilege of the rich to waste the time of the poor.”

“A scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that when you ask him a question, he is obliged to tell you the truth.”

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”

“The English are not happy unless they are miserable.”

“It is by the failures and misfits of a civilization that we can best measure the nature of its success.”

“The most we can do is to write—intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively—about what we see.”