W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
One of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.
Quotes to Explore
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We think of writing a book as a process, but the very word - process - suggests that there is one: a template to follow, a map to guide us. If that were true, someone would have surely figured out some marketable method we could all buy.
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Don't let nobody tell you that you can't do it. Love what you do until you don't love it anymore. Nothing's impossible.
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I'm so intrigued by women throughout history where the significance of what they were representing at that time is obscured by the fact a man saved them or they were prostitutes.
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The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.
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This invisibility, however, means that the opportunities for creative research are infinite.
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I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.
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In thinking about it, the villains often have a little bit more range because their morality is different. You can have just a really good time as an actor, and there is just more there that you can explore on that side of the story.
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Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world.
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In 1980, shortly before my 11th birthday, I wrote my first essay in English.
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Reverence is fatal to literature.
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People still text me to say that there is something about me in the paper, and what really annoys me is that if it's nasty, I then have to go and have a look, even though actually I don't want to know.
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My mother is a beautiful writer. Writing letters back and forth with her was an athletic endeavor, and it became something I really looked forward to.
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It's huge in the U.K., if someone's doing well, to put them down. That's what we do all the time. It's kind of like a cultural thing.
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Happiness is a mysterious concept. It seems to work best as futurity: at that point I will be happy, et cetera. I feel like I experience small pieces of joy day to day.
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My parents are high school sweethearts.
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The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
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I left home at 17 and I've been on the road ever since.
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Everyone thinks when they start writing that they can't do it. I was lucky. My sister Delia was the most important person in terms of encouraging me.
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We have the only cookbook in the world that has partial differential equations in it.
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Weirdly, there have been a lot of critics of conservatism, but very few critics of innovation. As a culture, we are deeply paranoid about politics, but we gaze upon innovation with rapturous adulation.
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If you have to be a one-hit wonder, then 'San Francisco' is the one to have.
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Cinema, which is influenced by every single part of life, is direct and reaches you immediately. And writing - the best writing is complex ideas communicated concisely. And music - if it's a good tune, make sure people can bloody hear it.
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It is a fact that princes who try to raise other princes with violence, end up destroying themselves.
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One of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.
