top of page
"I do not attachany exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life isthere to be lived rather than to be written about. My aimis to search out the manifold experience that it offers,wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents.I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishmentwhich does not absorb but rather adds pleasure toexistence. And as for posterity-damn posterity."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Creativity quotes

"It does not need to be perfect - or technically correct - to be magic."

"Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these - 'Chloe liked Olivia'. Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."

"For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control. I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go."

"If you you write with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can."

"Then I realized the vital necessity of art. Human life, yes, you nurse people, you clean house, you market, but then comes the moment of solace and flight. i sit and write and summon other friends, other forms of life, other experiences, and the voyage and the exploration, the delving into character, the vast expanse of life's possibilities and potentialities, contemplation of future travels, of dazzling friendships, all this then makes the chores and the sacrifices beautiful because they are diverted toward some beautiful aim, they become part of the structure of a work of art."

"Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You're not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest."

"The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth."

"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it."

"I like working among 'creative clutter'. It gives me a sense of activity and achievement."

"Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented."
Explore more quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

"It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour."

"It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it."

"When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?"

"Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes."Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books the write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."

"The passing moment is all we can be sure of it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it."

"We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby."

"I respect him. He has brains and character; and that, I may tell you, is a very unusual combination."

"I thought with melancholy how 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."
bottom of page