Quotes About Author

This paper, by its very length, defends itself from ever being read.

This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.

Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.

It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.

But you ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it is they who made it famous.

was that the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered into my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.

I must say I am a little impatient about the American scepticism. The event is what will decide all.

The mortal need was Security at all costs and by all methods, however stern or even harsh.

He cherished the illusion of power and consequence when the reality had gone.

I am told that a Boston lunch party is greatly to be preferred to a Boston Tea Party.

Such stories may predominate in daily life, but when literature starts taking cues from statistics, it seals its own fate.

a novel which I called Pornografia. At that time it wasn't such a bad title, today, in view of the excess of pornography, it sounds banal, and in a few languages it was changed to Seduction.

I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.

and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.

writing Jeeves stories gives me a great deal of pleasure and keeps me out of the public houses.

the French are such assess, they are truly inept, for they have to go abroad for help.

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be.

My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.

No, no, because she's a mental adolescent, and being romantic, she has a death wish. So, for a brief moment of passion,she completely abandons all responsibilities.

The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey.

Morale still seems reasonably high and, while the desertion rate has risen, it is still limited to those who can walk.

It seemed like I was surrounded by great and wonderful people unstable as uranium.

Drama is like meat and three veg. Whereas comedy is like the merangue at the end.

bullshit french post-war rationalizing