Author

I never understood the concept of a fluffy summer read. For me, summer reading means beaches, long train rides and layovers in foreign airports. All of which call for escaping into really long books.

From Maria Semple

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world. I always had a mind for characters and dialogue, and my head was filled with that stuff, so it seemed like a good place to start.

From Maria Semple

I don't know if it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm not going to be writing about Paris in the 1800s. I feel like it would come off as just ludicrously uninformed, even if I did a lot of research.

From Maria Semple

I naively thought I would quit television writing, move up to Seattle, my novel would come out, and then I'd have a novel writing career, and so I found myself really stuck in this very poisonous self-pitying state and felt like I'd never write again. And I blamed Seattle for that.

From Maria Semple

I don't mind finding these ugly sides to my personality and exaggerating them because that's something you can write towards.

From 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.

From Maria Semple

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

From Maria Semple

I steer clear of any novel that gets billed as a 'meditation.'

From 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.

From Maria Semple

My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.

From Maria Semple

Maria Semple

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