Maria Semple Quotes

Even when I was writing 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' I started to appreciate Seattle's many charms.

Maria Semple

• Writing

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Quotes to Explore

• Nuclear power plants must be prepared to withstand everything from earthquakes to tsunamis, from fires to floods to acts of terrorism.

  

  Ban Ki-moon
  • Power
  • Plants
  • Be Prepared

• I really believe that when you're playing a character that everything is contained in the script. If I'm pulling from things from my own life, then I think I'm being disingenuous to the character and the story.

  

  Walton Goggins
  • Life
  • Believe
  • Character

• The deadpan brilliance of John McCrea has been underrepresented in music since 2004, when Cake served up 'Pressure Chief.'

  

  Karan Mahajan
  • Up
  • Music
  • Pressure

• I never met a stripe I didn't like.

  

  Edgardo Osorio
  • Like
  • Never
  • Stripe

• I actually wanted to first direct and produce, but then I got this very cool opportunity to be in front of the camera once.

  

  Manish Dayal
  • Opportunity
  • Cool
  • Camera

• There's no smarter politician out there than Bill Clinton.

  

  Ed Rollins
  • Politician
  • Out
  • Smarter

• Hindi films are so deceptive. I thought Mumbai was this big, grand, beautiful city with sea-facing flats.

  

  Yami Gautam
  • Beautiful
  • City
  • Thought

• It's the sum of the parts that make up the whole, so in my opinion excellence comes from how one undertakes to do something. It all begins with the thought process - which is creative and exalted to produce something out of the ordinary.

  

  Pankaj Patel
  • Up
  • Opinion
  • Creative

• 'Wicked' gave us a story that 'The Wizard of Oz' did not. Two sides to every story.

  

  Abbi Glines
  • Story
  • Two
  • Sides

• 'The Last Airbender' is genetically engineered for me. I love martial arts. I study it. The movie's based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. I was raised Hindu.

  

  M. Night Shyamalan
  • Study
  • Philosophy
  • Buddhist

• The Arab representatives and their followers were not interested in the persecuted millions throughout the world; they were fixed on a political agenda that distracted the world from their own serious shortcomings in the human-rights department.

  

  Jack Schwartz
  • World
  • Political
  • Serious

• You think you're looking at things all the time, but you're not looking at things, you're looking at what your brain is interpreting through light and color. And who knows what everybody else sees?

  

  Fiona Apple
  • Time
  • Light
  • Brain

• Will I obliterate national debt? Sure, why not?

  

  Pat Paulsen
  • Why
  • Will
  • Debt

• I don't think of myself as a role model. I do try to live in a compassionate, considerate and positive way. The only advice I can offer is to find what you love to do, find the joy in it, and express yourself through your passion.

  

  Barry Williams
  • Live
  • Love
  • Passion

• I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

  

  J. D. Salinger
  • People
  • Happy
  • Happiness

• The ideas and practices of Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th-century Australian healer, had spread to the United States and, by the 1840s, held the country in thrall. Mesmer proposed that everything in the universe, including the human body, was governed by a 'magnetic fluid' that could become imbalanced, causing illness.

  

  Karen Abbott
  • Country
  • Universe
  • Ideas

• Any film I do needs to excite me at a script level.

  

  Mahesh Babu
  • Me
  • Film
  • Level

• If I go to a baseball game, I hear 'Shoeless Joe,' but otherwise, I hear 'toe pick' five times a day. No matter how many more movies I make, that'll be on my gravestone.

  

  D. B. Sweeney
  • Game
  • Day
  • Baseball

• There's a side to you as an actor, a selfish side, that wants to go on and play different roles.

  

  Katee Sackhoff
  • Different
  • Play
  • Actor

• Given that you're meeting a sloth, that feeling is generally joy, excitement, warmth, and love. What do those feelings smell like, you ask? Like laundry, watermelon rind, the top of a baby's head, boiling water, and fresh cut grass all mixed together.

  

  Ann Burton
  • Together
  • Water
  • Joy

• If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.

  

  Douglas Coupland
  • Writing
  • Money
  • Hope

• Some writing is a really nice solitary process, in a way, because you can be a little self-conscious around other people. If it's just you, and you're at your favorite piano, or whatever instrument, and you feel comfortable, then somehow, I always feel like it's opening a door and letting whatever is to pass through pass.

  

  Marketa Irglova
  • People
  • Writing
  • Nice

• I live in the moment.

  

  Amy Sedaris
  • Live

• Even when I was writing 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' I started to appreciate Seattle's many charms.

  

  Maria Semple
  • Writing