Maria Semple Quotes

Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.

Maria Semple

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Quotes to Explore

• My experience growing up in a rough and tumble town in the blue-collar world of Western Pennsylvania in the 1970s was that anything a man did was always more important than anything a woman did.

  

  Tawni O'Dell
  • Up
  • World
  • Important

• I was involved with drama departments since the 5th grade. I played at it. It was an escape.

  

  Adam Baldwin
  • Drama
  • Involved
  • Escape

• Just being the seeker, somebody whose open to spiritual enlightenment, is in itself the important thing and it's the reward for being a seeker in this world.

  

  Walter Isaacson
  • World
  • Important
  • Spiritual

• I know exactly what it is like to fight against the odds and to overcome adversity.

  

  Karen Handel
  • Know
  • Fight
  • Adversity

• The progress of India is the destiny of one-sixth of humanity. And it will also mean a world more confident of its prosperity and more secure about its future.

  

  Narendra Modi
  • World
  • Future
  • Humanity

• It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

  

  Ted Allen
  • People
  • World
  • Important

• Fortunately, I don't spend too much time reading or worrying about what people have to say, but the goal for me throughout this whole process - throughout my whole life - is to try to be happy.

  

  Landon Donovan
  • People
  • Life
  • Time

• I had 500 kids at camp this past summer for example. We do nine weeks for kids and nine days for grown ups every summer. The adult camp is a lot of fun.

  

  Wavy Gravy
  • Kids
  • Fun
  • Past

• Hair wax is my go-to. When it comes to shampoo, I use whatever is at the rink.

  

  Carl Hagelin
  • Hair
  • Whatever
  • Wax

• You guys are both saying the same thing. The only reason you're arguing is because you're using different words.

  

  S. I. Hayakawa
  • Different
  • Words
  • Same

• A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.

  

  Washington Irving
  • Life
  • History
  • Woman

• Before a shoot, I'll watch what I eat. During the shoot, I watch what I eat. Afterwards, the first thing I do is go have a steak and French fries.

  

  Camila Alves
  • First
  • Watch
  • Steak

• I want to upset people, I want to make people think, I want to keep people interested.

  

  Adam Lambert
  • People
  • Think
  • Want

• If you are a woman, you might feel torn between logical agreement and emotional resistance. Why? It seems like a simpler solution to blame men for the pay gap than to engineer your own bridge to higher pay.

  

  Warren Farrell
  • Men
  • Why
  • Woman

• When we think of India, most of us are in fact thinking of Rajasthan, that large splotch of dun-colored desert in the country's northwest which, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, was ruled by a succession of maharajas whose sense of color, opulence, and splendor created the most enduring images of India in the West.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Thinking
  • Country
  • Color

• I guess I'm attracted to people who are singing about love or life, and they have a particular passion that I can connect with.

  

  Langhorne Slim
  • People
  • Life
  • Passion

• The U.S. government places considerable trust in those given access to classified information, and we are committed to prosecuting those who abuse that trust.

  

  Dana Boente
  • Government
  • Trust
  • Abuse

• I do think musical-theater actors can get a bad rap, and I see why. There is a certain slickness - there's nothing better than an amazing musical, but an okay musical can be one of the worst times you've ever had.

  

  Laura Benanti
  • Why
  • Bad
  • Think

• I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.

  

  Oscar Levant

• When I founded Media Matters, there was another model, which would have been to call this the Brock Report. But I was much less interested in my own profile by that point, because I had already done that once, and it was not terribly fulfilling at the end of the day.

  

  David Brock
  • Done
  • Model

• People aren't often asked to make life or death decisions. There are no causes to die for. You can go through life never knowing which of your friends would really come through for you.

  

  Arabella Pollen
  • Life
  • Die
  • Decisions

• As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude ... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits.

  

  Baruch Spinoza
  • Mind
  • Habits
  • Men's

• I'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.

  

  Eunice Kathleen Waymon
  • Black
  • Sorry
  • Pianist

• Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.

  

  Maria Semple