Maria Semple Quotes
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I always write authors after I read their books. I've been doing it for years. I write a formal letter and send it to them in care of their agent. My mother always taught us to write thank you notes, and if an author puts themselves out there, they like to hear that their book connected with someone.
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It was important for me early on to find the voice of each character and figure out what was unique about them and their individual worldview that I could use for comedy or conflict.
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When I came back from my first TED, very few people knew what it was. But around the time I was sitting down to write 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' in 2010, TED was exploding.
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When I graduated high school, I was one of many English-majors-to-be traveling through Europe with a copy of 'Let's Go Europe' in one hand, 'Anna Karenina' in the other, a Eurail pass for a bookmark.
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I just feel like there's this illicit thrill in reading other people's mail and spying on their lives.
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After decades spent in rewrite rooms surrounded by other shouting writers, I discovered that I work best alone. I like being in charge of my time, working out the problems according to my own rhythms and being able to nap.
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I learned that comedy is born out of strong characters. I won't begin writing a character until I have a clear take on them.
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When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.
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It's great to be able to just go with an idea and not have 10 people in a room telling me why I can't write in a huge mud slide at a school function with 50 kindergartners running around.
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I quickly realized that shopping on Amazon had made the idea of parking my car and going into a store feel like an outrageous imposition on my time and good nature.
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My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.
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An artist must create. If she doesn't, she will become a menace to society.
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I think because I try to keep things as real as I can, or I try to start from a place of reality, I almost don't have the imagination to write a book that's not set where I am.
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I'm not the comedy police, but you watch a movie, and everyone's laughing, and then you shake it out, and you realize, 'There's no joke there!'
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I think a novel has to be about where you are at a given moment in time. I think it really needs to represent some specific pain you're going through. it's not just a story.
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Creating art is painful. It takes time, practice, and the courage to stand alone.
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We need to preserve our neighborhoods, our small business, our local economy.
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My summer reading suggestion: Pick a really famous, really long novel.
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I don't know if it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm not going to be writing about Paris in the 1800s. I feel like it would come off as just ludicrously uninformed, even if I did a lot of research.
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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.
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If you're an artist and you're on Twitter, you are doomed to mediocrity.
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After decades spent in rewrite rooms surrounded by other shouting writers, I discovered that I work best alone. I like being in charge of my time, working out the problems according to my own rhythms and being able to nap. That's a big one, the napping on demand!
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I drop my kid off at school and then race home, and it's a very limited time. 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.
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I suppose I could admire all these slow Seattle drivers for their safety-mindedness, consideration for others, and peace of mind. Instead, I'm a fury of annoyance.