Maria Semple Quotes
When I came back from my first TED, very few people knew what it was. But around the time I was sitting down to write 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' in 2010, TED was exploding.
Quotes to Explore
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Cuba needs a dose of perestroika.
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I think I was probably an early teenager when I discovered Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and a bunch of people that are on a long list of artists. They were important to me, especially as an early adolescent.
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Every member in Congress has a seat, and they deserve a seat at the table.
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The claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.
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What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.
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'Shameless' was such a weird time in my life because I never really experienced any kind of role that put me that much in the spotlight before.
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My mother worked in factories, worked as a domestic, worked in a restaurant, always had a second job.
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When the government takes video of people in public places, the images should only be kept as long as they may reasonably be needed to investigate a crime. After a few days, if there has not been a report of a crime, they should be destroyed.
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National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a mob, always demented and the second a king, generally sane.
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In my early 20s, I was a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and might be one of the few people on the planet who have voluntarily read all his novels.
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Unlike many Californians or New Yorkers, college football is a religion down south.
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It's an honor to live in and serve the great City of Los Angeles. I'm also immensely grateful for the support I've received from Ireland.
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What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister; I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia, family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.
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Stealing things is a glorious occupations, particularly in the art world.
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I love to see a wood full of bluebells. Growing up in the Kent countryside, I have special memories of this brief annual spectacle.
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I was a fashion editor for years in London before I came to 'Vogue,' and I spent my life arranging the folds of a ball gown skirt for a picture and pinning fabric and using all those stylist tricks. And you don't have to do that now because they can do it in Photoshop.
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I have lifestyle requirements. Photos, meetings, lunches, dinners, facial care, tooth care. It requires an exorbitant amount of money.
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People just can't wrap their heads around two young black women in a major production.
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For me, it's not necessarily interesting to play a strong, fearless woman. It's interesting to play a woman who is terrified and then overcomes that fear. It's about the journey. Courage is not the absence of fear, it's overcoming it.
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I don't start fights, but sometimes I don't walk away from them. It hasn't happened in a long time, but it's happened, and I regret those times. I should have been more in control of myself, stronger, more adult.
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Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation.
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I love the fact that we are surrounded by this spectacular natural beauty that routinely strikes us dead. Hikers walk off into the woods and are never seen again. And still we tug on our fleece and skip off into the wilderness, not a care in the world.
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When I came back from my first TED, very few people knew what it was. But around the time I was sitting down to write 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' in 2010, TED was exploding.
