Top 66 Quotes by Maria Semple

My first novel didn't sell well. It was really painful and humiliating and shocking to me.

We need to preserve our neighborhoods, our small business, our local economy.

'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.

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

Ruthless concern with story is what I learned in television.

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

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

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

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

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