“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

"Rider Haggard: Still Riding", p. 28
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramati…" by V.S. Pritchett?
V.S. Pritchett photo
V.S. Pritchett23
British writer and critic 1900–1997

Related quotes

Bertrand Russell photo

“The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1910s, Political Ideals (1917)

Zafar Mirzo photo

“Self-realization – is an individual's full implementation of potential realization: spiritual-moral, intellectual, creative, and emotional, during the process of which it reveals and realizes its human dignity and professional abilities.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Eric R. Kandel photo

“Recall of memory is a creative process. What the brain stores is… only a core memory. Upon recall, this memory is then elaborated upon and reconstructed, with subtractions, additions, elaborations, and distortions.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

Joan Didion photo

“The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.”

Joan Didion book Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Benjamin H. Freedman photo

“How much can you depend on their loyalty? You can depend upon their loyalty as much as the Germans depended upon it in 1916.
And we're going to suffer the same fate as Germany suffered, and for the same reason.”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

His opinion on the loyalty of Zionists to the United States
Willard Hotel speech (1961)

Samuel T. Cohen photo

“People are people, and all people have emotions and biases, rarely understood: intellectual and emotional behavior don’t necessarily have an inverse correlation. Oppenheimer, as superhuman and wise as he was in so many ways, was still a human being. Depending upon the occasion he could be as human (dramatic, overwhelming, megalomaniacal, self-serving, and even downright dishonest, as his arch-rival Edward Teller was accused of being, and was) as most of us. Like most of us, depending upon the circumstances, he could change his personality and alleged beliefs at the drop of a hat.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Robert Greene photo

“The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

Boris Sidis photo

“Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, — the fear instinct.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: Nervous Ills their Cause and Cure (1922), p. 311

Nick Hornby photo

“Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.”

Nick Hornby book Songbook

Songbook (2003)

Related topics