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Portrait of Maria Semple

Maria Semple

(1964) Novelist United States

144 quotes in 527 categories

Maria Semple is a novelist from the United States, best known for Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Quick Facts About Maria Semple

Born: May 21, 1964
Nationality: United States
Profession: Novelist
Notable works: Where'd You Go, Bernadette

About Maria Semple

Maria Keogh Semple is an American novelist and screenwriter. She is the author of This One Is Mine (2008), Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012), and Today Will Be Different (2016). Her television credits include Beverly Hills, 90210, Mad About You, Saturday Night Live, Arrested Development, Suddenly Susan, and Ellen. She is a 2013 recipient of the Alex Awards.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by Maria Semple

“The drivers here are horrible. And by horrible, I mean they don't realize I have someplace to be.”

Drivers

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“Just because it's complicated, just because you think you can't ever know everything about another person, it doesn't mean you can't try.”

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You come out into the world after a season of TV and you're just swearing and saying mean things to people and…

Mean

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“Here’s something about Mom: she’s bad with annoyances, but great in a crisis. If a waiter doesn’t refill her water after she’s…

Mom

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“Parking in Seattle is an eight-step process. Step one, find a place to park (gooood luuuuck!). Step two, back into the angled…

Parking space

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“Eleanor's heart giggled with mad abundance: so much to share, so much goodwill, so many notes to compare, so many ways to…

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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…

Able

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“Ten years ago I saw a documentary on the siege of that Moscow theater. After just forty-eight hours of the terrorists confining…

Ten years

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When I'm sitting at my computer writing, I really have this fiendish smile on my face. I am not thinking about the…

Anxiety

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“Every single iceberg filled me with feelings of sadness and wonder. Not thoughts of sadness and wonder, mind you, because thoughts require…

Meditation

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“The sight of Elgie flat on the slimy dock, groaning "My wife, my wife", with a gun pointed at him, and me…

Humor

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Maggie Shipstead's prose is so graceful and muscular, so dazzling, so sure-handed and fearless, that at times I had to remind myself…

Breathe

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When your eyes are softly focused on the horizon for sustained periods, your brain releases endorphins. It's the same as a runner's…

Brain

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

Interest

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

Book

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“I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time.”

Time

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“All those ninnies have it wrong. The best thing about Seattle is the weather. The world over, people have ocean views. But…

Ocean

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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…

Book

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“I can feel the irrationality and anxiety draining my store of energy like a battery-operated racecar grinding away in the corner. This…

Grocery store

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“Please see that Bee gets this.” She slipped the documents back in the envelope. “I know it’s a lot. But she can…

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“Seattle is the only city where you step in shit and you pray, Please God, let this be dog shit.”

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“I wish a camera had been trained on me, because it would show what it looks like for a woman to be…

Parenting

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“don’t care where you live, but here in Seattle, our restaurants are better than your restaurants. “Hmmm,”

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“Barnaby Fanning was the lone offspring of a marriage between two of New Orleans’ finest families. Growing up in a Garden District…

Christmas card

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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…

About

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Maria Semple by topic

Writing (20) Life (12) Time (10) Thinking (10)