V. S. Pritchett Stories Quotations

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.

A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.

The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.

Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.