x dismiss this message
Did you know you can edit this page?
-
Sign Into Shelfari
-
Choose something to edit
-
Save your contributions
see page history
Description edit
Filled with keen observations, autobiographical notes, and the seeds of many of Maugham's greatest works, A Writer's Notebook is a unique and exhilarating look into a great writer's mind at work. From nearly five decades, Somerset Maugham recorded an intimate journal. In it we see the... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
Quotes edit
-
“For unfortunately talent and originality do no always attend nobility of character.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“For my part, I think to keep copious notes is an excellent practice and I can only regret that a natural indolence has prevented me from exercising it more diligently. They cannot fail to be of service if they are used with intelligence and discretion.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“I have never claimed to create anything out of nothing; I have always needed an incident or character as a starting point, but I have exercised imagination, invention and a sense of the dramatic to make it something of my own.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“This may be why has neither swing nor vigor.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“I have done what I wanted to do and now silence becomes me. I am told that in these days you are quickly forgotten if you do not by some new work keep your name before the public, and I have little doubt that it is true. Well, I am prepared for that.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“People wonder at the romantic lives of poets and artists, but they should rather wonder at their gift of expression. The occurences which pass unnoticed in the life of the average man in the existence of a writer of talent are profoundly interesting. It is the man they happen to that makes their significance.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“What a strange idea is this that change must always be progress! Europeans complain that Chinese workmen use the same implements as they have used for centuries; but if with these rude tools they have been able to work with a delicacy and a sureness unsurpassable by Western artificers, why on earth should they change?”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“One has to be especially wary of the ideas which seem the most self-evident and the most obvious: they are current, we have heard them accepted as truisms from our childhood, and everyone around us accepts them without demur, so that often it does not even occur to us to question them. Yet it is exactly these ideas which must be first put upon the scales to be most carefully weighed.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“One fusses about style. One tries to write better. One takes pains to be simple, clear and succinct. One aims at rhythm and balance. One reads a sentence aloud to see that it sounds well. One sweats one's guts out. The fact remains that the four greatest novelists the world has ever known, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, wrote their respective languages very indifferently. It proves that if you can tell stories, create character, devise incident, and if you have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write. All the same it's better to write well than ill.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“Part 1. At the beginning of the nineteenth century France was the richest and most highly populated country in Europe; the Napoleonic wars drained her wealth and decimated her people. For more than a hundred years now she has been a second-class power masquerading as a first-class one. It has been a double misfortune to her; first because it led her to pretensions she lacked the resources to maintain, and secondly because it caused the greater powers to fear ambitions which she could never in point of fact have realized. The war (WWII) has made manifest what only the very astute saw. Let her face the truth and decide what she will do about it....she must cease to depend upon the prestige of her past greatness; she must abandon her self-complacency; she must face facts with courage and realism. She mus put the common welfare above the welfare of the individual.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“Part 2. She must be prepared to learn from peoples she has too long despised that a nation cannot have strength without sacrifice, efficiency without integrity, and freedom without discipline. She were wise to turn a deaf ear to these gentlemen of letters, for it is not flattery that can help France, but truth. She alone can help herself.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.”
W. Somerset Maugham -
“For this is the point: no one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the cliches that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. On the contrary he thinks them fresh and true...The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood. He is so framed that he honestly shares the aspirations, the prejudices, the sentiments, the outlook of the great mass of the public. He gives them what they want because that is what he wants himself. They are quick to discern the least trace of insincerity and will have nothing to do with it.”
W. Somerset Maugham
Authors & Contributors edit
- W. Somerset Maugham (Author)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 809
Subjects edit
Popular Tags
We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.
