Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.

—W. Somerset Maugham

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

—W. Somerset Maugham

The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.

—W. Somerset Maugham

Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.

—W. Somerset Maugham

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.

—W. Somerset Maugham

I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.

—Rita Mae Brown

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

—Woody Allen

A man lives with himself for seventy years, and doesn't know who he is.

—Israel Salanter Lipkin