210 Quotes by Maria Semple

Much of the time in the writer's room is spent working on story, and I was always challenging myself to make it more interesting, tighter and more surprising: to come at it sideways in a way that the audience wasn't expecting.

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

One reason I find all this character growth and narrative swerving so exhilarating is because I never got to do it when I wrote for TV. Our characters needed to remain consistent from week to week.

On Jan. 1, 2012, I resolved to not buy anything from Amazon for a year.

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.

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.

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

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

On my walks, that's when the good ideas come. The kind of hard, gritty work is when you're sitting at the computer and it's kind of intense and you're kind of in super control of it - the walks are when you let go. That's when the really big breakthroughs come in, and it's very strange.