Top 66 Quotes by Maria Semple

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.

Both 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' and my first novel, 'This One is Mine,' are pretty complex on a story level, and fun reads as a result.

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

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

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

'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.

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

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.

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!'

If I had written something, and I had written myself into a corner, I didn't abandon it. Because I remembered: There's always more.