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"I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage.

They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest."

W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

"I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not.


This is so me. I have always roamed in my life. I have never put roots deeply anywhere. They only "root" in my life is my wife, she is much the same as me. We have no children we have never had the inclination to do such a thing, we recently discussed this in great depth and arrived at the conclusion that we are just not wired to put down roots as other people do.

Coincidentally, just yesterday evening, I read an amusing little blurb about Somerset Maugham from a 1949 literary publication:

"Somerset Maugham, who is a legal French resident and not a visiting Englishman, is at present in Spain. The only way he can realize on his Spanish royalties is to go there, collect and spend. He can't take them out, and the pile of pesetas grows high. The last time he was in Madrid - on a similar errand - he was asked if he would autograph books at a certain bookstore. Modest man that he is, he couldn't imagine many Spaniards wanting his autograph, but he said he would be there. Shortly before six o'clock, the advertised hour, he went to the Puerta del Sol and found a long queue outside the bookstore. He had expected to be through by seven at the latest, but at ten-thirty he was still signing his name. He autographed more than 2000 books. From other sources we learned that Maugham is not only the most popular English novelist in Spain, but that he is the most popular novelist (period). "Catalina", his latest novel, won't be published there until after he has left the country, which may be just as well, considering his angle on the Inquisition and a few other institutions."

Regarding the quote in the original post, Maugham's novel "The Moon and Sixpence" is a fictionalized version of the life of french painter Paul Gauguin. I tend to associate Gauguin with his travels, life & art in French Polynesia so the quote about some men being born out of their due place was probably an introduction to the reader regarding his restlessness.

Most authors write what they know so Mr. Maugham must have had those yearnings himself.