Maria Semple Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.
-
I'm just trying to have fun, and maybe the way I hold myself kind of freaks people out. I don't feel like an outsider, and I think my friends feel the same way I do. Now that we're playing to larger audiences, maybe we're weird to some people. But I'm trying to express what I am.
-
My voice, I have to say, is kind of miraculous because I was born with a cleft palate.
-
Archery requires very sensitive muscles.
-
I went into acting as psychotherapy, and it's still a work in progress.
-
My first paying job, when I was 15, I was a day camp counselor.
-
Writing is always a restorative process. It's like paddling a kayak. When you're writing, you can't do anything else. You're in the space you're in. So, in that way, it's enormously centering and restorative.
-
Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.
-
I went from working with Spielberg to working with Clint Eastwood - I might as well just retire.
-
Friendships are discovered rather than made.
-
White lies keep social dignity intact and are far more prevalent than most people realize. Several studies have found that an average person is lied to from 10 to 200 times a day - mostly just to keep a conversation going, to avoid conflict, or to establish a connection with someone.
-
One-newspaper towns are not good because all the surviving newspaper does is print money. They make 25 percent on their money every year, and if they go down to 22 percent, they start laying people off.
-
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
-
Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
-
Aglionby Academy was the number one reason Blue had developed her two rules: One, stay away from boys because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Aglionby boys, because they were bastards.
-
In order to depict a man one must understand him, and to understand him one must be like him; in order to portray his psychological activities one must be able to reproduce them in oneself. To understand a man one must have his nature in oneself.
-
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.
-
I really wasn't even aware that Batman and Superman had this kind of grudging friendship.
-
I have good skin, but it's dry - drier than you would think, considering I have Latin skin. It's fairly transparent, too, so I'm constantly trying to give it nourishment and moisture, but nothing really holds.
-
I'm just going to try to do the best work at whatever I'm going to be, and I don't think I'm going to be an actress.
-
My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrations by Newell C. Wyeth.
-
When I was pregnant, I had the romantic idea that after the baby was born I would not only take up reading in earnest again, but also write a novel while my daughter slept in her Moses basket. Of course, I barely had time to keep up with my magazines until she started sleeping properly.
-
I can remember when I was National Security Adviser, the intelligence community told us... they put out an intelligence report saying that Iran would never back off from attacks on shipping in the Gulf if we use force.
-
My strength as a TV writer was my total lack of interest in television.
