Maria Semple Quotes

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Maria Semple

Profession : Novelist

Birth : May 21, 1964

An artist must create. If she doesn't, she will become a menace to society.

Maria Semple

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.

Maria Semple

I survived many a youth hostel bunk room reading Tolstoy by flashlight.

Maria Semple

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

Maria Semple

When you become a parent, that's a whole new level of life intruding. Nobody tells you how boring and time-sucking it's going to be! Or how the responsibility feels like an airbag going off in your life.

Maria Semple

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.

Maria Semple

I know what it's like to feel snobby; I know what it's like to feel anxiety; I know what it's like to feel like busted because you're crazy.

Maria Semple

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

Maria Semple

When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.

Maria Semple

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.

Maria Semple

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.

Maria Semple

Ruthless concern with story is what I learned in television.

Maria Semple

And dialogue, I'm good at it, and it's because it's the only thing you have to work with in TV writing.

Maria Semple

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.

Maria Semple

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.

Maria Semple

In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward.

Maria Semple

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.

Maria Semple

'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.

Maria Semple

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

Maria Semple

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!

Maria Semple