Maria Semple Quotes

My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.

Maria Semple

• Book
• Reality
• Drama

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Quotes to Explore

• The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done. I try to make sure that I don't repeat my music.

  

  A. R. Rahman
  • Good
  • Work
  • Music

• I feel like we all have our skeletons.

  

  Taraji P. Henson
  • Like
  • Feel
  • I Feel Like

• When I was in high school, I was really into string theory and superstring theory and read 'Scientific American.' It's fascinating.

  

  Sam Trammell
  • School
  • American
  • High

• I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Believe
  • Men
  • Act

• I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor.

  

  Jack Nicholson
  • People
  • Good
  • Want

• In 2007, everything changed with the iPhone. As crippled as that first model now seems, with its lack of apps and glacial cellular connectivity, the iPhone was a practical, useful, self-contained computer a child could understand. It was an information appliance.

  

  Walt Mossberg
  • Child
  • Model
  • Information

• I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Like
  • Loved
  • Because

• I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.

  

  H. P. Lovecraft
  • Business
  • Man
  • Thoughts

• My original idea was to produce and not make records myself.

  

  T Bone Burnett
  • Myself
  • Idea
  • Original

• Do not despise the fish because they are absolutely unable to speak or to reason, but fear lest you may be even more unreasonable than they by resisting the command of the Creator. Listen to the fish, who through their actions all but utter this word: 'We set out on this long journey for the perpetuation of our species.'

  

  Saint Basil
  • Long
  • May
  • Fear

• I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening.

  

  Yusef Komunyakaa
  • Hope
  • Black
  • See

• I think there's plenty of evidence that we need to stop spewing so much carbon into the air, that we're contributing to climate change and that we ought to look for alternatives.

  

  Lamar Alexander
  • Change
  • Stop
  • Air

• I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

  

  Jack Nicholson
  • Time
  • Love
  • Success

• I had all these tapes in my closet that I had shot years ago with my friend Jean-Michel Basquiat. I was working on a film about him when he died, and then I just put everything away. It was too sad.

  

  Tamra Davis
  • Friend
  • Years
  • Sad

• It's pure Black Label. It's about violence and booze. That's all it is. There is no plan.

  

  Zakk Wylde Black Label Society
  • Black
  • Violence
  • Plan

• There are no silos at 'Frontline.' Our digital team works with our filmmakers, and our filmmakers work with our digital team. They're always in touch, and they're always talking.

  

  Raney Aronson-Rath
  • Work
  • Team
  • Always

• We're in a world that celebrates things: success, beauty, money. And I reckon that's really about 4 per cent of the world. The rest of us are just getting on with it.

  

  Imelda Staunton
  • World
  • Money
  • Success

• I'm known as a kind of dramatic, serious, almost humorless actor and the fact is, I'm a funny guy, and I spend most of my life trying to find a lighter side of things, and on stage was given plenty of opportunity to do that.

  

  Campbell Scott
  • Life
  • Trying
  • Guy

• Whenever Elvin Jones comes to Seattle I try to go catch him.

  

  Matt Cameron Pearl Jam

• I love poetry. If my mind gets a bit tight or bound up with information or depressed with bad news, I find a good book of poetry is like going to the gym for an hour. My mind just expands.

  

  Mark Rylance
  • Up
  • Good
  • Mind

• There was a point in the latter 1990s at which, suddenly, every sitcom and drama in sight had to have a gay or lesbian character or couple. That was good news as a voucher of the success of the gay rights movement, but it still grew a bit tiresome: 'Look at us! Our show is so hip, one of the characters is homosexual!'

  

  Lionel Shriver
  • Good
  • Character
  • Success

• It is almost a rule that the more complex a man is, the simpler his billing. A person with a retrospective ability gone rampant often would be called an historian. Similarly, one to whom reality doesn't seem to make sense gets dubbed a philosopher.

  

  Joseph Brodsky
  • Reality

• I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things. It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another book, and that to successive others. It is incredible, the number of books you hopefully open and disappointedly close, only to take down another with the same result.

  

  Carolyn Wells
  • Book
  • Numbers
  • Incredibles

• My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.

  

  Maria Semple
  • Book
  • Reality
  • Drama