W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
Quotes to Explore
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I've made up little mantras for myself, catchphrases from a screenwriting book that doesn't exist. One is 'Write the movie you'd pay to go see.' Another is 'Never let a character tell me something that the camera can show me.'
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We should cease thinking about men as the enemy of children and women.
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The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.
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I'm guilty of it myself, sort of thinking, 'Classic novels: snoozeville.' But there is a huge amount of wonderful material.
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I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
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I try to choose the projects that I think are the most well-written and well-executed, and the rest of it is so beyond my control to be almost not worth thinking about at all.
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When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.
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I came up in the theater, and I learned pretty quickly that reading a review, whether it's good or bad, can strangely affect the next performances, because you're reacting to something that's been said about you. So I tend to avoid that stuff pretty studiously.
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Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
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I'm loyal. I'm real. I'm not afraid to say what I'm thinking.
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It's easier to release an ebook than a print book.
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You need people around you that care about you and are thinking about you in your best interest. And keep your mind straight.
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Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.
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A tactic used by authors of virtually every single book I've ever read that propounds a conspiracy theory is to attack an agency as being part of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination, but when this same agency comes up with something favorable to the author's position, the author will cite that same agency as credible support for his argument.
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Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
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Webster and I are very aloof. The two of us go and sit there by ourselves. I sit by myself in the corner with my book and the newspaper. He kind of runs around a little bit, and then he goes and sits on top of the picnic table. He never plays with other little dogs.
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I think my printing to this day looks like the printing right out of a comic book. Actually, I always wanted to be in a comic book. I watched cartoons when I was a kid, too, and both comics and cartoons lit fire in my imagination. This realm holds a lot of interest for me, a lot of passion for me. So to be comic-ized, yeah, that's cool.
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I didn't study science beyond high school level, but I'd been reading a lot of science books by people like Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley and Daniel Dennett. I also spent a year working on a fellowship in a research centre - the Allan Wilson Centre - where I got a hands-on look at their work sequencing DNA.
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You can never know too much about writing. If you think you know everything, you're not leaving yourself open to learn. . . . The best writers are always learning, exploring, and trying to improve.
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You don’t become a teacher to make a world of money. You become a teacher to make a world of difference.
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For me, writing is not a search for explanations but a ramble in quest of what informs a place, a hunt for equivalents.
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Why, in our 'free' country, do Americans meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices, even when we are dying?
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Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
