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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Oh, I was only twenty four hours from Tulsa,Ah, only one day away from your arms;I hate to do this to you but I love somebody new, what can I do?And I can never, never, never … go home again.

  

  Hal David
  • Home
  • Hate

• Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

  

  Linus Torvalds

• It's a fascinating job, to come in and be the most interesting person in an episode. Whoever the guest star is, that's the job - to maintain the interest and the focus for that 42 minutes or whatever, and it should be a huge relief to those people that are the leads in the shows.

  

  Mark Sheppard
  • People
  • Job
  • Interesting

• One skill of a great entrepreneur is to get a whole complicated discussion and then say, 'We're going to do this one and we're only going to do this one'. Managers are good at prioritizing. Entrepreneurs know what is the one thing.

  

  Bing Gordon
  • Good
  • Great
  • Entrepreneur

• One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way.

  

  Orhan Pamuk
  • People
  • Life
  • Trying

• What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.

  

  Barney Frank
  • People
  • Great
  • May

• If you were 12, and Beyonce was up onstage saying to you, 'You get to do exactly whatever you want to do,' that would be awesome. I wish she said it to me when I was 12.

  

  Lauren Mayberry Chvrches
  • Up
  • She
  • Wish

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

  

  Maria Semple