Maria Semple Quotes
-
We need to preserve our neighborhoods, our small business, our local economy.
-
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!
-
If I had written something, and I had written myself into a corner, I didn't abandon it. Because I remembered: There's always more.
-
My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.
-
Ruthless concern with story is what I learned in television.
-
My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.
-
My talent isn't so much in traditional research as in finding really smart people and badgering them with questions.
-
My first novel didn't sell well. It was really painful and humiliating and shocking to me.
-
This is Seattle. We're supposed to have superior taste.
-
On my walks, that's when the good ideas come. The kind of hard, gritty work is when you're sitting at the computer and it's kind of intense and you're kind of in super control of it - the walks are when you let go. That's when the really big breakthroughs come in, and it's very strange.
-
I attended TED in 2007 and 2008, the last two years the conference was held in Monterey.
-
I think that's the most important job of a novelist - to bring authority to their writing.
-
In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There's so much more freedom in fiction writing.
-
On Jan. 1, 2012, I resolved to not buy anything from Amazon for a year.
-
'Mad About You' fit my sensibility the most of any show that I worked on, and as a result, it was really fun. It felt like a very natural fit.
-
Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.
-
'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' is an epistolary novel - one told in letters. I had no idea how much fun it would be, puzzling together the plot with letters and documents.
-
There's a happiness that comes from writing that I won't live without.
-
Even when I was writing 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' I started to appreciate Seattle's many charms.
-
I steer clear of any novel that gets billed as a 'meditation.'