"A Sunny Place for Shady People"--Somerset Maugham Didn't Say That
He was actually using a well-known phrase about the French Riviera to counter it.
Writers love to pull quotes from other writers. When deployed strategically, a borrowed quote can add an emotional jolt to a piece. (When deployed recklessly, it can just look lazy, or cliched.) When writers are covering the topic of the French Riviera, especially if that coverage involves the less seemly components of this historically indulgent Mediterranean coast, they invariably pull the one that dubs it “a sunny place for shady people,” crediting W. Somerset Maugham.
Most recently, the phrase turned up in a New Yorker article titled “The Madness of Donald Trump,” by none other than David Remnick, the magazine’s editor in chief. In it, Remnick writes about newly installed President Trump’s out-of-nowhere yet completely predictable proposal to clear Palestinians out of Gaza and turn the place into a big resort (emphasis mine):