Maria Semple Quotes
I can only do really serious writing for a couple of hours. And then I always go on a walk. I do a one-to-two-hour walk; I don't go running or hard hiking.
Quotes to Explore
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I'm just a black hole for stuff. No one should ever hand me anything, because I get so easily distracted. I'll be like, 'Oh, look, something shiny!' I'm glad I never learned how to drive. I would be really dangerous.
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Nothing is unfilmable.
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On my mother's side, I'm English, so that's where the freckles come from. On my father's side, I'm German, and he has the fantastic olive hues... I was given mum's skin, whereas my brothers and sisters were given my dad's skin. I do tan up quite well, but it takes me a bit longer.
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I shall produce nothing that will offend the proprieties, whether applied to children or grownups. My pictures are turned out with clean hands and, therefore, with a clear conscience which, like virtue, is its own reward.
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Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.
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I've had the experience of having a book praised but then it doesn't sell. Or not praised but then it sells.
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I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.
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The Japanese version comes with a translation, but that's different from the lyrics, so people could look things up and find a translation of their own if they're interested.
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It's really hard for kids nowadays: you can get a decent education, but there are no jobs out there. You worry about how they are ever going to afford to live anywhere.
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I do not support a North American Union. I disagree fundamentally with that, and I think the United States should be governing itself and not being governed by multilateral unions, the United Nations.
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You don't have to paint your walls lime green just to try to have your home feel decorated. If you're a classic dresser or preppy dresser or a modern dresser, you wear a lot of black - whatever it is - your home should reflect that as well.
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Though social eugenics was discredited long ago, we still often think of the genome in quasi-eugenic terms. When we read about the latest discovery of a link between a gene and a disease, we imagine that we've learned the cause of the disease, and we may even think we'll get a cure by fixing the gene.
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Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.
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Newspapers are busily experimenting with different models. Traditionally, and I suspect in hindsight very mistakenly, online news was free. And once given free access readers felt it was their entitlement.
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If you're losing, just be a man; be a man and lose as a man.
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Were women meant to do everything - work and have babies?
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Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy.
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I want to be an activist professor.
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A police force, wherever they are, is made up of amazing people, and I respect them a great deal.
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Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.
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Yeah, I mean I've definitely had a bunch of action scripts sent to me, but again I'm a stickler for directors. If it's like an action flick with a great director then it's like 'Oh let's look at this thing,' but if it's just like a shoot-em'-up with a first time director. I don't know if that's the trajectory I want to take with what I'm doing.
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Growth and profit are a product of how people work together.
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All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought.
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I can only do really serious writing for a couple of hours. And then I always go on a walk. I do a one-to-two-hour walk; I don't go running or hard hiking.
