W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

What is missed when people talk about books is the moment of grace when the reader creates the book, lends it the authority of their life and soul. The books I love are me, have become me.

The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.

A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have such a different reaction to it.

I think things can have more than one meaning and still connect with people. There's a lot of meaning to the title 'Music For People' and they're all true and they're all accurate.

When people are reading a book, it's a personal thing. They're reading it; it's in their own mind; it's in their own personal space when they're reading it.

No, I only like whether I like the story or not, essentially see something in it that isn't completely there.

Literature speaks with everyone individually - it is personal property that stays inside our heads. And nothing speaks to us as forcefully as a book, which expects nothing in return other than that we think and feel.

When I read, I don't need a character to look like me, act like me, or think like me. I don't need to have my heart broken. I don't need to be surprised or amused or challenged, and I don't need to swoon.

I want all my books to provoke some kind of response in the reader, to make them think something or feel something or both, and for that to become a part of them and work into their own lives.

Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me.

It's the emotion of it that hits me, more than anything technical.

I loved the idea of dramatic art of storytelling as a way to make sense of things. It's really what I love and what I care about.

Because I'm highly empathetic, it's easy for me to put myself in the character's shoes. It's, you know, finding the truth of the moment.

The whole point of reading is that the writer is speaking to you, and if you're not listening, you're not going to have any fun reading.

A book is full of ideas. You just live with what you read for so much longer. A lot of the times, nowadays, with a movie or TV show, it's like, 'Oh, it's entertainment!' And you never think about it again.

I think you're always drawn to what you love, and I'm always really drawn to things that feel really real and really true to me. I love things that make me think of things in a way I hadn't, and I love looking at people in the world in a way that I hadn't. And sometimes big, huge stories do that for me, but I think I am drawn to smaller ones.

That's the power of fiction, that it can take the collective and make it personal.

I always tell people, the first time I heard 'She Talks To Angels,' those lyrics did something to me.

There are writers, and there are readers who want something more. They want to get at the grist of life.

I remember reading 'Catcher in the Rye,' but I don't think I got it.

You finish a film not in the editing, but in the conversations that audiences have with themselves - and in that sense, every viewer is making a slightly different film. And that's wonderful.

I like leaving a space hollowed out, where as I change I can inject new meaning in the shell of the songs all of the time. Where anyone who listens can hopefully inhabit them in their own way.

Songs, especially lyrics, have always been really important to me.

It's very important to me that every person takes away their own meaning from a song, and it's why I don't always love spelling out what a song is about for somebody.

Because the beauty of songs, I think, is if you do it right a lot of people can relate to it in their own way and make their own meaning out of things.