Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them. - William Somerset Maugham

Almost all the people who have had most effect on me I seem to have met by chance.

...you know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.

Art... is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.