A Quote by Maria Semple

You come out into the world after a season of TV and you're just swearing and saying mean things to people and they're looking at you like, Who are you? And oh yeah, you think, I have to reacclimate to the way people genuinely treat each other.
I think it's really easy for people to point out hypocrisy in people's lives. It's like yeah, I get on planes a lot, and I drank from a plastic water bottle today - you know what I'm saying? A lot of people would just be like, "Oh, you're a hypocrite. You live in an ecovillage for a month, and then you fly around the world to talk about a movie." Don't think that I don't think about those things! Don't think that that's not, like, a quandary in my life. It can be a pretty intense ethical dilemma. I think it's about figuring out, you know, navigating life.
Those teams that really trust each other, really communicate with each other, really hold each other accountable and do it in a good way, in a respectful way, and just genuinely enjoy and like each other, I think that can be something that helps you separate when talent is equal.
You have people saying two things that seem to contradict each other. One, that we live in a golden age of TV. The other, that television is dying. There's a reason for that. What we mean when we say it's dying is that it's already way past being fragmented into little chunks. Now it's being polarized into an aerosol mist.
I think New Yorkers are some of the friendliest people in the world, but it just comes out in a different way. In a way where they're swearing at you.
When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other. Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn't possess, acts but doesn't expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.
I think Detroit is already providing a model for change in the world. I think that Detroit - I mean, people come from all over the world come to see what we're doing. People are looking for a new way of living.
I'm not interested in being gratuitously relatable and broadening out what I do in order to reach more people. When I'm going into specific details of the trauma, I think it's the details that connect with people. I'm accidentally relatable - I didn't mean to be, and I didn't think I would be. It feels like what I'm saying on stage is quite shameful and possibly perverted; so for other people to be laughing and go, "Oh, yes, we understand that. We are like that too," is very lovely.
I'm an extremist so I'm either hated or loved. I think it's down to when I first got to Formula One not always knowing what I was saying, saying things that mean one thing but people were taking the other way and then people don't forget.
I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other. I've always been very affected by politics, society, but I never got to a place as a writer where I felt like I could begin to deal with such things and do it well.
I believe that people would be happier sharing things and being much more of a collective rather than working from these neo-liberal ideas of just looking after yourself. I think people need each other.
I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other.
I would let my fans and people looking from the outside looking in dictate that. But, in my mind I gotta treat myself like I'm the best and gotta strive to be better than what I am. So of course my work ethic and the way I think as a person and an artist I'll feel that way. But on a boasting level, you would never hear that come out my mouth.
I've never seen anything like the way some young people behave. They go out on a date, and they're sitting opposite each other at a table, and they're not looking at each other, and they text each other as though they're deaf-mutes. It's insane.
I'm very conscious about the way I treat people because I was never really taught to treat people in a respectful or kind way. I never really saw that role model, so for me, that made me just want to be the opposite of what I had and treat people the opposite of the way I saw other people treat other people.
I'm always amazed that anyone is paying attention to anything that I do, you know what I mean? I feel like I'm constantly having conversations with people where they're saying, "I didn't know that you could be serious," and then other people are saying, "Oh, I didn't know that you could do comedy." And so I don't know if it really helped too much with this. I like to think that it does.
There are people we treat wrong and later we're prepared to treat other people right. Perhaps this sounds mercenary, but I feel grateful for these trial relationships, and I would like to think it all evens out - surely, unknowingly, I have served as practice for other people.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!