W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
-
Never hate a song that's sold a half million copies.
-
Your genome knows much more about your medical history than you do.
-
Let us have peace.
-
I have got prostate cancer, and I have to keep monitoring that. It's no problem, it's under control and I'm very cool about it, but other people are dying from it.
-
There's a fast-track if you can do the networking. For some personalities it works, but for mine it doesn't.
-
Since I played a warrior in 'Magadheera,' my character sported shoulder-length hair and a thick beard.
-
The average Nigerian person has come to reconcile himself with the fact that his or her social progress remain essentially in his or her hands in collaboration with other fellow Nigerians and not merely relying on what government alone could provide for him or her.
-
I just realized the best way to live your life is to just be you, as cliche as it sounds. I grew up trying to please everyone.
-
If I didn't write, I'd be like a duvet cover; I have no other marketable skills. Clearly I'm not meant to do anything else.
-
The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.
-
Man, I have had so much plastic surgery, I don't even recognize myself, sometimes. If I catch a glimpse in a window or something, I think it is someone else.
-
I always tell women to use the fact that we offer a different point of view in a room full of men, to their advantage. Because we often stand out, we gain a unique platform to demonstrate our knowledge and capabilities.
-
What led me to be an actor is that I have a strange something in me that can drastically change the way I appear to the world. Growing up, I couldn't understand why people would always have different ideas of me - but because of that I became aware of how you can manipulate your own ability to change. And then I learned to make a career of it.
-
Nobody is faster than me.
-
I hate the fact that people think 'compromise' is a dirty word.
-
There are heads of royal families who control hereditary fortunes that defy comprehension.
-
It's a myth that you have to wash your hair all the time.
-
When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all.
-
Anyone who tells you they don't need to rewrite, they're usually the ones who need it worst.
-
This feeling of not belonging to the same sensation which grips you in a dream, you find yourself walking through an unfamiliar district. On waking you realize, little by little, that the pattern of its streets had overlaid with the one with which, in day time, you are familiar.
-
An answer to a question no one asked is a wasted answer.
-
I think I was also afraid of the novel. I write line by line, proceeding at snail's pace, rewriting as I go and paring the excess away. This is against all the best advice for writing long form prose, and I have tried over the years to break myself of the habit, but I can't bear to leave anything ungainly on the page and half the fun for me is that tinkering. So the length of a novel was a daunting prospect.
-
In fact, I don't even know myself. That is the big secret of the story. That there is no story.
-
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.
