W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

My point of view when I make a book or I make a movie is to see the humanistic point of view. The point of view of the daily life of normal people.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.

I had to stop traveling alone because I missed so many planes. When somebody runs up to you in the airport and begins to tell you their life story, you can't say, 'Excuse me, boo,' as they're weeping on your bosom.

In the end, I'm really interested in people and what we do with our short time here on earth. I'm interested in the human soul.

What is this gypsy passion for separation, this readiness to rush off when we've just met? My head rests in my hands as I realize, looking into the night that no one turning over our letters has yet understood how completely and how deeply faithless we are, which is to say: how true we are to ourselves.

O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one." (Between the Dusk of a Summer Night, 13-16)

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

Sometimes we'll only see each other in passing, like ships passing in the night.

Human experience is usually paradoxical.

what is most personal is most universal

Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night?

You have to work hard at staying in contact with your friends so that the relationships will continue and live on... Friendships, along with love, make life worth living.

Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.

The only influence that can really upset the injustice and iniquity of men is the power that breathes in the Christian tradition, renewing our participation in the Life that is the Light of men.

You know, the thing about life and love is that they are both ever-changing while people seldom are. (Acheron)

Human beings have Love for one another inborn in them - Love, reassembler of our ancient nature, who tries to make one out of two and to heal human nature.

You will walk differently alone, dear, through a thicker atmosphere, forcing your way through the shadows of chairs, through the dripping smoke of the funnels. You will feel your own reflection sliding along the eyes of those who look at you. You are no longer insulated; but I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.

If human beings are all monsters, why should I sacrifice anything for them?" "Because they are beautiful monsters..., And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.

Little by little, in telling Sam all these details, I got to see the bigger point of baseball, that it can give us back ourselves. We’re a crowd animal, a highly gregarious, communicative species, but the culture and the age and all the fear that fills our days have put almost everyone into little boxes, each of us all alone. But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us.

It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.