“There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessar...” — W. Somerset Maugham Quote

“There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.”

“I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They expect him to do it, they neither feel gratitude to him for doing so nor need to, and we have only blame for a man who brings children into the world that he can't or won't provide for. It seemed to me that if an omnipotent creator was not prepared to provide for his creatures with the necessities, material and spiritual, of existence he'd have done better not to create them.”

“I walked onstage in a play at prep school, and with childish naivete, told myself, 'Wow, I'm an actor!'”

“I don't read 'genre' fiction if that means novels with lots of killing and shooting. Even Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country for Old Men' seemed pretty childish in that regard.”

“The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashion, and placing value on ourselves by them is one of the most childish pieces of folly.”