A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham
Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.
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Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.
The only cure for loss of illusions is fresh illusions, more illusions, and always illusions.
A stand-up act is almost like a pool. You know what I mean? It's like a pool, and you're always skimming little leaves out of it, messing with the chlorine level, putting up umbrellas. You're trying to make one little stagnant body of water perfect. Whereas a late-night show is like a river, always moving forward.
I understand that actors lose their looks, they change over time, but people don't lose their talent. I think that, as people get older and the people who make the decisions get older, they don't like hiring people much older than them because it reminds them of their fathers, and they don't like telling people older than them what to do. It makes them uncomfortable. I think that happens a lot.
My own image of my work is that I no sooner settle into something than a break occurs. These breaks are always painful and depressing but despite them I see that there's a consistency that holds out, but is hard to define.
Loss is very painful, because any kind of loss leaves a hole in the fabric of one's existence.
You don't need the painful memories, because either you've resolved them. Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn't work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it's even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.
We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.
The loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.
If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.
There are players like that - you know they have been rascals, and that you can bring them in, give them a new environment and get a length of time out of them, but they will always return to type. You can get something out of them, then you have to get rid of them.
I really like umbrellas. It's like, I have a roof! I carry it with me! Umbrellas always amuse me.
I was looking at these actresses sort of sitting around under umbrellas, people bringing them cold drinks and I was like, 'That looks so much easier than what I'm doing' and I was so wrong.
The colours of insects and many smaller animals contribute to conceal them from the larger ones which prey upon them. Caterpillars which feed on leaves are generally green; and earth-worms the colour of the earth which they inhabit; butter-flies, which frequent flowers, are coloured like them; small birds which frequent hedges have greenish backs like the leaves, and light-coloured bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk who passes under them or over them.
What if the leaves were to fall a-weeping, and say, "It will be so painful for us to be pulled from our stalks, when autumn comes?" Foolish fear! Summer goes, and autumn succeeds. The glory of death is upon the leaves; and the gentlest breeze that blows takes them softly and silently from the bough, and they float slowly down, like fiery sparks, upon the moss.
Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.
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