It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
W. Somerset MaughamA good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
W. Somerset MaughamA novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
W. Somerset MaughamYet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.
W. Somerset Maugham