Maria Semple Quotes

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.

— Maria Semple

“I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn't fall, because Mom was in the world.”

— Maria Semple

“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.”

— Maria Semple

“What's this?" She pulled out a card and held it away from her face. "I can't read what it says." I took it from her and read it aloud.
1. Beeber Bifocal
2. Twenty Mile House
3. Bee
4. Your escape
Fourteen miracles to go.”

— Maria Semple

“Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass - anything and everything - the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone's ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don't understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such.”

— Maria Semple

Life is a stew, and pot is poop.If someone stirred even a teeny-bit of poop in the stew, would you really want to eat it?

— Maria Semple

We were quiet for a while, and then I said, "I think my favorite part of Antarctica is just looking out." You know why?" Dad asked. "When your eyes are softly focused on the horizon for sustained periods, your brain releases endorphins. It's the same as a runner's high.

— Maria Semple

“We'd pass icebergs floating in the middle of the ocean. They were gigantic, with strange formations carved into them. They were so haunting and majestic you could feel your heart break, but really they're just chunks of ice and they mean nothing.”

— Maria Semple

I'm not too good when exposed to people

— Maria Semple

“I can feel the irrationality and anxiety draining my store of energy like a battery-operated racecar grinding away in the corner. This is the energy I will need to get through the next day. But I just lie in bed and watch it burn, and with it any hope for a productive tomorrow. There go the dishes, there goes the grocery store, there goes exercise, there goes bringing in the garbage cans. There goes basic human kindness.”

— Maria Semple

“All those ninnies have it wrong. The best thing about Seattle is the weather. The world over, people have ocean views. But across our ocean is Bainbridge Island, an evergreen curb, and over it the exploding, craggy, snow-scraped Olympics. I guess what I'm saying: I miss it, the mountains and the water.”

— Maria Semple

“Ten years ago I saw a documentary on the siege of that Moscow theater. After just forty-eight hours of the terrorists confining the hostages to their seats with no sleep, the lights blazing and being forced to pee their pants-although if the had to shit, they could do so in the orchestra pit-well,more than a few hostages just stood up and walked to the exit knowing they'd get shot in the back. Because the were DONE.”

— Maria Semple

“I tried to love Dad and not hate him for his fake cheer and the way he gets dressed. I tried to imagine what Mom saw in him back when she was an architect. I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who finds every little thing he does a total delight. It was sad, though, because the thought of him and all his accessories always made me sick. I wished I'd never made the connection about Dad being a gigantic girl, because once you realize something like that, it's hard to go back.”

— Maria Semple

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

— Maria Semple

“It's for survival. You need to be prepared for novel experiences because often they signal danger. If you live in a jungle full of fragrant flowers, you have to stop being so overwhelmed by the lovely smell because otherwise you couldn't smell a predator. That's why your brain is considered a discounting mechanism. It's literally a matter of survival." "That's cool.”

— Maria Semple

“The most random things get her way too full of love”

— Maria Semple

“Side note: Down here, you're either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you'll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he's a legend, all-star personality, but there's the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e. won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don't know. Finally, there's Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.”

— Maria Semple

“The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians.”

— Maria Semple

“Greetings from sunny Seattle, where women are "gals," people are "folks," a little bit is a "skosh," if you're tired you're "logy," if something is slightly off it's "hinky," you can't sit Indian-style but you can sit "crisscross applesauce," when the sun comes out it's never called "sun" but always "sunshine," boyfriends and girlfriends are "partners," nobody swears but someone occasionally might "drop the f-bomb," you're allowed to cough but only into your elbow, and any request, reasonable or unreasonable, is met with "no worries."
Have I mentioned how much I hate it here?”

— Maria Semple

Now that Dad was crying, I was, like, both of us can't be sitting on rocks in Antarctica crying. It's going to be OK, Dad.

— Maria Semple

“We live a life of privilege. That doesn't mean we can literally switch off these women, whose only fault was being born in the Congo during civil war. We need to bear witness.”

— Maria Semple

“Every single iceberg filled me with feelings of sadness and wonder. Not thoughts of sadness and wonder, mind you, because thoughts require a thinker, and my head was a balloon, incapable of thoughts. I didn't think about Dad, I didn't think about you, and, the big one, I didn't think about myself. The effect was like heroin (I think), and I wanted to stretch it out as long as possible.
Even the simplest human interaction would send me crashing back to earthly thoughts. So I was the first one out in the morning, and the last one back. I only went kayaking, never stepped foot on the White Continent proper. I kept my head down, stayed in my room, and slept, but, mainly, I was. No racing heart, no flying thoughts.”

— Maria Semple

“The war in Congo rages on with no end in sight," the announcer said. "And now comes word of a new campaign by the soldiers, to find the women they have already raped and re-rape them." "Holy Christ on a cross!" Mom said. "I draw the line at re-raping." And she turned off NPR.”

— Maria Semple

“It's a ritual in which (a) the contractor explains in great detail the impossibility of the job you've asked him to do, (b) you demonstrate extreme remorse for even suggesting such a thing by withdrawing your request, and (c) he tells you he's found a way to do it, so (d) you owe him one for doing what he was hired to do in the first place.”

— Maria Semple

“The penguins that spent most of their time fighting were the ones with no chicks ... It's like they're supposed to be taking care of their chicks. But because they don't have any, they have nothing to do with all their energy. So they just pick fights.”

— Maria Semple

“It was one of the rare mornings when Dad was around. He'd gotten up early to go cycling, and he was sweaty, standing at the counter in his goony fluorescent racing pants, drinking green juice of his own making. His shirt was off, and he had a black heart-rate monitor strapped across his chest, plus some shoulder brace he invented, which is supposedly good for his back because it pulls his shoulders into alignment when he's at the computer. "Good morning to you, too," he said disapprovingly. I must have made some kind of face. But I'm sorry, it's weird to come down and”

— Maria Semple

“I wish a camera had been trained on me, because it would show what it looks like for a woman to be awakened to the truth. The truth? My lies and exaggerations would be responsible for a mother being locked up.”

— Maria Semple

“Let's say you get a present and open it and it's a fabulous diamond necklace. Initially, you're delirious with happiness, jumping up and down, you're so excited. The next day, the necklace still makes you happy, but less so. After a year, you see the necklace and you think, Oh, that old thing. It's the same for negative emotions. Let's say you get a crack in your windshield and you're really upset. Oh no, my windshield, it's ruined, I can hardly see out of it, this is a tragedy! But you don't have enough money to fix it, so you drive with it. In a month, someone asks you what happened to your windshield, and you say, What do you mean? Because your brain has discounted it.”

— Maria Semple

So am I. I have stumbled enough. I am forgiven. I am abundant. I am certainly insouciant. I'm not your tar baby. You're the star, baby. Love the lucky well. MARIA SEMPLE wrote for television shows including Arrested Development, Mad About You, and Ellen. She has escaped from Los Angeles and lives with her family on an island off Seattle. This is her first

— Maria Semple

“The motto of this city should be the immortal words spoken by that French field marshal during the siege of Sebastopol, "J'y suis, j'y reste"-"I am here, and here I shall remain." People are born here, they grow up here, they go to the University of Washington, they work here, they die here. Nobody has any desire to leave. You ask them, "What is it again that you love so much about Seattle?" and they answer, "We have everything. The mountains and the water." This is their explanation, mountains and water. As much as I try not to engage people in the grocery checkout, I couldn't resist one day when I overheard one refer to Seattle as "cosmopolitan." Encouraged, I asked, "Really?" She said, Sure, Seattle is full of people from all over. "Like where?" Her answer, "Alaska. I have a ton of friends from Alaska." Whoomp, there it is.”

— Maria Semple

“My talent isn't so much in traditional research as in finding really smart people and badgering them with questions.”

— Maria Semple

“'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.”

— Maria Semple

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

— Maria Semple

I think that everyone in Seattle, their daily existence, is enriched by all the charitable giving that is courtesy of Microsoft.

— Maria Semple

“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!'”

— Maria Semple

“If you're an artist and you're on Twitter, you are doomed to mediocrity.”

— Maria Semple

In my high-minded and naive way, I believed the only books worth reading were the classics.

— Maria Semple

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

— Maria Semple

“Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.”

— Maria Semple

“This is Seattle. We're supposed to have superior taste.”

— Maria Semple

“When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.”

— 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'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.”

— Maria Semple

Much of the time in the writer's room is spent working on story, and I was always challenging myself to make it more interesting, tighter and more surprising: to come at it sideways in a way that the audience wasn't expecting.

— Maria Semple

Some people, especially literary people, they think, 'I'll write this original script, and it will be full of ideas. I'll submit it, and they'll hire me for television.' That's not the case.

— Maria Semple

“The one constant in my life has been my love of books: reading them, thinking about them, talking about them, holding them, turning people on to new ones.”

— Maria Semple

“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.”

— Maria Semple

“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.”

— Maria Semple

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.

— Maria Semple

“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)”

— Maria Semple