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An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

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
Else
Puts
Book
Till
Nothing
Lies
Writing
Reader
Heart
Months
World
Blood
Unread
Maybe
Spends
Lying
Author

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There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.
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You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
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When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.
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You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
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No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.
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I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.
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The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
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She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.” Waddington, smiling, translated the question. “She says I’m good.” “As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.
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When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.
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The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.
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When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
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Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.
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Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.
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Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.
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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.
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They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection but perhaps she does not always remember him.
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She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!
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You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.
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