"The short story was Maugham's true métier, and some of the stories he wrote are among the best in the language." -Anthony Burgess
"Maugham has given infinite pleasure and left us a splendour of writing which will remain for as long as the written English word is permitted to exist." -
Daily Telegraph
"If all else perish, there will remain a storyteller's world...that is exclusively and forever Maugham, a world of verandah and prahu which we enter as well as we do that of Conan Doyle's Baker Street, and with a happy and eternal homecoming." -Cyril Connolly,
The Times (London)
"[Maugham] is as clever a craftsman as the cleverest...He chooses his themes with as quick an eye for tragedy as the most compassionate." -
The Observer "A formidable talent, a formidable sum of talents." -
The Spectator