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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
Write
Devise
Tell
Incidents
Doesn
Sincerity
Stories
Damn
Character
Characters
Matter
Doubt
Writing
Create
Passion

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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.
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You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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It does the heart good to look at you.
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It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage
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It is bad enough to know the past it would be intolerable to know the future.
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I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn't matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material ... Don't wait for experience to come to you go out after experience. Experience is your material.
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The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
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The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
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What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
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Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers
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I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.
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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.
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Tolerance is another word for indifference.
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The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
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I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
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And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.
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I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
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