A Quote by Maria Semple
I just feel like there's this illicit thrill in reading other people's mail and spying on their lives.
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People just like the thrill of anything. Dangerous things and dark things are exciting. Like as a kid, I knew I wasn't going to get killed if I went into the Haunted House but you kind of feel like you are. And when it comes out the track the other side, it's like, "we're still alive"! And I find it really funny when adults get really scared because I've not been really scared since I saw Jaws when I was a little kid. I just think people like the thrill of it, they like to feel like they accomplished something, that they survived the movie.
When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they're feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.
Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.
When you get the ideas, that's a thrill; when you're writing the book and it's corning out well, that's a thrill; when you finish it and other people read it, that's a thrill. There are going to be reviews, of course; not everyone's going to love it. You feel sort of naked and vulnerable in a way. That's just a minor part of the process, really. If you can't take that part, you shouldn't be in the business. But there are so many joys to writing.
The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.
People don't object to spying on the grounds that the secret dossier about them might be full of errors. They object to spying because it's spying.
Arguing with people is like reading your e-mail at 4 in the morning. There is absolutely no good that can come of it. It's just scratching an itch.
The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.
Sometimes the buzz of reading about others eating comes from the voyeuristic thrill of seeing how the other half lives: the gold leaf and truffles or - in the case of Trimalchio's feast in Petronius' 'Satyricon' - the dormice and honey.
The pleasure of reading biography, like that of reading letters, derives from the universal hunger to penetrate other lives.
Just reading that - just reading that a person can be black and still perform in blackface, making fun of black people for a living, and at the same time be a genius and be an incredible entertainer and at the same time be extremely conflicted and feel like - just feel terrible for doing that, essentially, which is what Bert Williams felt, from what I gather, from what I read - all of that just made - was so incredible to me.
My main goal in life is to be happy. If I can make other people happy by doing what I love, then I feel like I've done everything in life that I've wanted. I just want to make people feel good and change people's lives with music, and that's it.
I like to get off my phone because when I sit with my phone, I don't feel creative cos I'm just sitting reading other people's things.
I feel like the closest that we get to fulfilling our calling is making a difference in other people's lives. I feel like it's different for everybody. Our purpose and our calling are different. We're all called to do different things. But some way, somehow, it has to be impacting other people. If not, what are you doing? How does it have an impact? How does it have an eternal impact? It has to be investing in other people, somehow making a difference in their lives. When we do that, I really believe that we'll fulfill why we're here and what we're supposed to do.
It's been very jarring for me to stand in public and read about myself and my daughter and her father. I feel like I'm reading someone else's story, and I feel like I've lost something, too, in the writing of self, as if I'm standing and reading myself, as a stranger, to other strangers.
I feel like the books that I'm reading at any given time will really help me with my work, because it's just more characters, and you see new people while you're reading.
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