W. Somerset Maugham

"And the poor lady, so small in her black satin, shrivelled up and sallow, with her funny corkscrew curls, took the little boy on her lap and put her arms around him and wept as though her heart would break. But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer."

"My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror."

"He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her."

"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit."

"The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes."

"He was terribly conscious that he only had one life and with seemed to sad to think that he had wasted it. He could never surmount his immeasurable regret. And that's why I tell you that Byring is right. Even though it only lasts five years, even though he ruins his career, even though this marriage ends in disaster, it will have been worth while. He will have been satisfied. He will have fulfilled himself."

"He was terribly conscious that he only had one life and it seemed to sad to think that he had wasted it. He could never surmount his immeasurable regret. And that's why I tell you that Byring is right. Even though it only lasts five years, even though he ruins his career, even though this marriage ends in disaster, it will have been worth while. He will have been satisfied. He will have fulfilled himself."

"Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit of it."

"I walked with my eyes on the path, but out of the corners of them I saw a man hiding behind an olive tree. He did not move as we approached, but I fell that he was watching us. As soon as we had passed I heard a scamper. Wilson, like a hunted animal, had made for safely. That was the last I ever saw of him. He died last year. He had endured that life for six years. He was found one morning on the mountainside lying quite peacefully as though he had died in his sleep. From where he lay he had been able to see those two great rocks called the Faraglioni which stand out of the sea. It was full moon and he must have gone to see them by moonlight. Perhaps he died of the beauty of that sight...---The Lotus Eater"

"But there are people who take salt with their coffee. They say it gives a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the inevitable disillusionment you experience on seeing them gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that beauty can give you. It is the weakness in the character of a great man which may make him less admirable but certainly more interesting. Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu..."

"If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?"

"Mrs. Mac Andrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a woman is much to blame if he does."

"It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest."

"It gives him spiritual freedom. To him life is a tragedy and by his gift of creation he enjoys the catharsis a purging of pity and terror, Which Aristotle tells is the object of art. Everything is transformed by his power into material and by writing it he can overcome it. Everything is grist to his mill. ... The artist is the only free man."

"When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character."

"The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you."

"No egoism is so insufferable as the Christian with regard to his soul."

"we do not write as we want but as we can"

"If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write."

"Writing is the supreme solace."