A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
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That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.
I remember a table in BarchesterTowers that had more character than the combined heroes of three recent novels I've read.
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
I think that there's some brainwashing going on with this idea that we don't have time to cook anymore. We have made cooking seem much more complicated than it is, and part of that comes from watching cooking shows on television-we've turned cooking into a spectator sport. ...My wife and I both work, and we can get a very nice dinner on the table in a half hour. It would not take any less time for us to drive to a fast-food outlet and order, sit down, and bus our table.
There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
I've read every single fantasy novel there is. I mean, I would challenge a lot of people to read more fantasy novels than I have.
I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.
I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.
When 'Malcolm in the Middle' was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy...but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as 'Malcolm' was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That's harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read ('Breaking Bad'), it was just, 'Good night, Nurse! I'm going after this sucker!'
What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.
Everybody should read fiction… I don’t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won’t educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it’s not just that mechanics and plumbers don’t read literary fiction, it’s that doctors and lawyers don’t read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn’t trust art.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind.
To the distracting occupations belong especially my lecture courses which I am holding this winter for the first time, and which now cost much more of my time than I like. Meanwhile I hope that the second time this expenditure of time will be much less, otherwise I would never be able to reconcile myself to it, even practical (astronomical) work must give far more satisfaction than if one brings up to B a couple more mediocre heads which otherwise would have stopped at A.
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