Maria Semple Quotes
Writing a novel is so hard, and there are so many problems that the last thing you're thinking about is adapting this mess you have on your hands as a movie. You just want to get it to work as a novel. That's your main focus.

Quotes to Explore
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I would say if you have a dream, follow it. It doesn't really matter whether you are a woman or from India or from wherever.
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You're never going to read 'The Wealth of Nations,' and you shouldn't, really. It's 900 pages.
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I study what's happening in music. I want to sound different than everybody else.
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Chess was natural for me; I was extremely successful.
Garry Kasparov -
It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that.
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I have a roof over my head. I had a breakfast, and a lot of people in the world can't say that. I'm not going to complain about being interviewed.
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I can go to a country song, go right into it and make it sound authentic. And I think that's because of my ear as an impressionist.
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The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
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I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.
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There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
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That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.
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Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.
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She looked at me penetratingly. So I suppose you can figure out what happened next.
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Our country is in deep trouble. To talk and re-litigate in 1998, or even what Mitt Romney said or didn't say in 1994 or 2002, I don't think most people really care.
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People I respect complimenting me on my work in fashion is more exciting to me than anything I ever achieved as a Spice Girl. I am now competing in an arena where I can hold my head high. I feel quite confident in what I'm doing now, much more than the singing. I was never going to give Mariah Carey any competition.
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People sometimes wear shirts that are really boxy, and you can see them over the top of their trousers, which doesn't look right to me.
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I just want to show the fans my big smile and play the game that I love.
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First, we will focus on the privatization of small and medium sized enterprises, followed by the medium size industry and then we will move on to the heavy industry.
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I've tried, in 'Bloodmoney,' to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have.
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I am quite amazed how, when people earn lots of money, they think they have to spend it on things that give them access to the club constituted by the people who are in their tax bracket.
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Most diets would have you cutting things out from your diet; they are about denial and discipline.
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Trade and investment have come to be the foundation, the ballast, of the U.S.-China relationship, providing great stability.
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Funny but, for me, the Bible was a hobby before it was a serious study. It was the thing I'd sneak off and do on the side, feeling rather guilty because I wasn't doing my real school homework or whatever... and never thinking I would make it a life's work.
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Writing a novel is so hard, and there are so many problems that the last thing you're thinking about is adapting this mess you have on your hands as a movie. You just want to get it to work as a novel. That's your main focus.