Maria Semple Quotes

I got a huge knot in my stomach because if Antarctica could talk, it would be saying only one thing: you don't belong here. (277)

The sooner you learn it's on you to make life interesting, the better off you'll be.

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.

This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russian Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.

I'm not too good when exposed to people

Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.

My strength as a TV writer was my total lack of interest in television.

Your mission statement says Galer Street is based on global "connectitude." (You people don't just think outside the box, you think outside the dictionary!)

I'd say I never considered myself a great architect. I'm more of a creative problem solver with good taste and a soft spot for logistical nightmares.

The first stop on this crazy train is Kindergarten Junction, and nobody gets off until it pulls into Harvard Station.

I think one of the good things about writing novels is that you always start from scratch.

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.

Ruthless concern with story is what I learned in television.

I think thats the most important job of a novelist - to bring authority to their writing.

When I'm creatively solving problems, I'm in my sweet spot, and nothing can take me out of that joyful present.

My way of looking at the world is that if it is true, it is funny and it is dark. No matter how dark it is, I just think it is funny. I can't help it.

I want find a part of myself that I feel shame about, or that I feel really scared of exposing to the world.

I felt so full of love for everything. But at the same time, I felt so hung out there to dry, like nobody could ever understand. I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time.

I spend my whole life trying to put up a front to prevent people from seeing certain parts of me. Weirdly, when I go to write, I feel like I have to expose it, almost compulsively.

I can't tell you the number of times I've been in the middle of a perfunctory conversation, and someone will say, 'Tell us what you really think.' Or 'Maybe you should switch to decaf.

Unfortunately Seattle is my muse, for the better or worse of Seattle - I'm not sure.

One of the main reasons I don't like leaving the house is because I might find myself face to face with a Canadian.

I'll see something awful on the street and I'll come home and say to my boyfriend, "I just saw the funniest thing on the street." It's a stance. It's the way I was born, or the way I was damaged.

Anything I write I ask myself: Is it true, is it entertaining?

Can you believe the weather?'...'Actually, I CAN believe the weather. What I can't believe is that I'm actually having a conversation about the weather.

You bet your bindi that’s how big I want it.

My day is not that fun-filled or that filled usually with complications.

I love the camaraderie of a writers' room.

Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: LOVE, NINA might be the most charming book I've ever read.

Maggie Shipstead's prose is so graceful and muscular, so dazzling, so sure-handed and fearless, that at times I had to remind myself to breathe. Astonish Me is a treasure of small surprises.

When I'm writing a book, I draw from my immediate experience, and my books are therefore almost a snapshot of where I am at that moment in my life.

Was it happiness I'd found in my long marriage? Or capitulation? Or is that all happiness is, capitulation?

I know it's a lot. But she can handle it. I'd rather ruin her with the truth than ruin her with lies.

As far as I’m concerned, the only thing sweeter than seeing a friend is that friend canceling on me.

Fast, Cheap, Good: Pick Two.

Earlier this year, I'd told a mother at school I'd been married fifteen year. She asked, "What's the secret to a long marriage?" I thought for a second, then answered, "Staying married.

People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.

Creating art is painful. It takes time, practice, and the courage to stand alone.

There's something uniquely exhilarating about puzzling together the truth at the hands of an unreliable narrator.

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.

My summer reading suggestion: Pick a really famous, really long novel.

People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.

the most random things get her way too full of love

I was a ghost on a ghost ship in a ghost land