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If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.
W. Somerset Maugham
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W. Somerset Maugham
Age: 90 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1965
Died: January 1
Army Scout
Literary Critic
Novelist
Physician Writer
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
Character
Characters
Matter
Doubt
Writing
Create
Passion
Write
Devise
Tell
Incidents
Doesn
Sincerity
Stories
Damn
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
Some American delusions: 1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country. 2) That American coffee is good. 3) That Americans are business-like. 4) That Americans are highly-sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
W. Somerset Maugham
Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
W. Somerset Maugham
I knew that suffering did not enoble it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
W. Somerset Maugham
Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.
W. Somerset Maugham
There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.
W. Somerset Maugham
The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.
W. Somerset Maugham
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
W. Somerset Maugham
Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
W. Somerset Maugham
I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
W. Somerset Maugham
There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very likely to think him clever.
W. Somerset Maugham
The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.
W. Somerset Maugham
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.
W. Somerset Maugham
The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.
W. Somerset Maugham
The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.
W. Somerset Maugham
Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.
W. Somerset Maugham
Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
W. Somerset Maugham
