210 Quotes by Maria Semple

Unfortunately Seattle is my muse, for the better or worse of Seattle - I'm not sure.

I think one of the good things about writing novels is that you always start from scratch.

When I'm creatively solving problems, I'm in my sweet spot, and nothing can take me out of that joyful present.

When I'm sitting at my computer writing, I really have this fiendish smile on my face. I am not thinking about the past or the future or how it's going to be received. I feel that I'm very lucky that way; I don't carry that particular anxiety around with me. I'm not anxiety-free by any means, but that happens to be one that I've been spared.

I drop my kid off at school and then race home, and its a very limited time. I can only do really serious writing for a couple of hours. And then I always go on a walk, I do a one-to-two-hour walk; I dont go running or hard hiking.

I think because I try to keep things as real as I can, or I try to start from a place of reality, I almost don't have the imagination to write a book that's not set where I am.

I can't tell you the number of times I've been in the middle of a perfunctory conversation, and someone will say, 'Tell us what you really think.' Or 'Maybe you should switch to decaf.

I want find a part of myself that I feel shame about, or that I feel really scared of exposing to the world.

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.