W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

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

• Writing
• Character
• Passion

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one.

  

  Baltasar Gracian
  • Time
  • Never
  • Word

• I was always under the impression that acting is an innate gift. One of the first things I heard them say at Koothu-P-Pattarai was that actors should realise the art of acting through their training.

  

  Vijay Sethupathi
  • Art
  • Training
  • Gift

• I tour with a piano, actually. Luckily I am able to hire people that deal with it completely and magically a piano appears on stage and then magically disappears when I leave.

  

  Vanessa Carlton
  • People
  • Piano
  • Tour

• Even before it opened its retail arm, Beigh was renowned among pashmina cognoscenti for the quality and complexity of the work produced in its workshop, a large, airy, sunlit rectangle of a room directly across from its second-floor shop.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Work
  • Quality
  • Complexity

• A lot of people go in and have to create their own characters, and they do fine with it.

  

  D. B. Weiss
  • People
  • Create
  • Go

• Back in the 1960s, I got a superb education for very little money. The bill for my first year at Harpur College in New York was a few hundred dollars.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Money
  • Education
  • College

• Men are sort of doofuses about sunscreen, and for the most part, women are more inclined to take better care of themselves, but a reminder is always good for everyone.

  

  Landon Donovan
  • Good
  • Men
  • Women

• I was inspired to spend an entire year - my 65th year - reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu's messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

  

  Wayne Dyer
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Inspired

• Hindi films are so deceptive. I thought Mumbai was this big, grand, beautiful city with sea-facing flats.

  

  Yami Gautam
  • Beautiful
  • City
  • Thought

• Frankly speaking, it's only the script that matters to me the most. If I like the script, then I just commit to myself and go ahead with it. But I also look at the commitment and confidence of the director of the film because it's him who will shape the film.

  

  Vidya Balan
  • Film
  • Confidence
  • Commitment

• Personal responsibility is not only recognizing the errors of our ways. Personal responsibility lies in our willingness and ability to correct those errors individually and collectively.

  

  Yehuda Berg
  • Responsibility
  • Lies
  • Ability

• A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.

  

  Beau Willimon
  • Politics
  • Realist
  • Optimist

• In high school, the fastest I ever ran was like a 4.67; that's pretty fast. But then, I only weighed 168 pounds.

  

  Gabriel Luna
  • School
  • High
  • Pretty

• I'm incredibly neurotic and a control freak. I like the thought that if there's going to be anyone to blame it's going to be me.

  

  Laura Marling
  • Control
  • Thought
  • Blame

• There's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil 20 years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it.

  

  Sam Mendes
  • Good
  • Live
  • Family

• I love showing my scar on my tummy - it is shaped like a question mark.

  

  Sam Taylor-Johnson
  • Love
  • Question
  • Like

• Let me tell you that I love the United States.

  

  Vicente Fox
  • You
  • Tell
  • Let

• There was a door to which I found no key: There was the veil through which I might not see.

  

  Omar Khayyam
  • Door
  • See
  • Key

• Western art is built on the biographical passion of one artist for another.

  

  Jim Dine
  • Art
  • Passion

• I've never wanted to be famous. That has never been a part of any dream. I do remember being little and thinking I might want to be a singer. But not a famous singer - just, like, a singer.

  

  Cam
  • Thinking
  • Remember
  • Dream

• It's not easy. I make snap judgments, too, and I start to write people off. And then I start to remind myself of how I'm constantly asking judges not to write people off. And so then I try to resist it.

  

  James Forman, Jr.
  • People

• People tell me how great it must have been to ride horses and stuff. Well, do it for two days straight on dusty days when the cows and horses were really tired.

  

  Arthur Slade
  • People
  • Great
  • Tired

• 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
  • Writing
  • Character
  • Passion