A Quote by Maria Semple

When I graduated high school, I was one of many English-majors-to-be traveling through Europe with a copy of 'Let's Go Europe' in one hand, 'Anna Karenina' in the other, a Eurail pass for a bookmark.
I never really got into marketing. I went to school for it, but never pursued it once I got out. Instead, I went to Europe for about two months, just traveling around in youth hostels and Eurail trains with my friends.
Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand." - Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}
Basically, on the question of Europe, I want to see a social Europe, a cohesive Europe, a coherent Europe, not a free market Europe.
The book that made me decide to go into Russian literature was 'Anna Karenina,' which I first read in high school. The thing that appealed to me and constituted its Russianness for me was that it was simultaneously incredibly funny and sad.
After I graduated from college, while traveling around Europe, hitchhiking, doing the tourist thing, I went into a church in Dublin.
I believe that if we don't offer legal ways of emigrating to Europe and immigrating within Europe, we will be lost. If those who come - who are, generally speaking, the poor and needy - are no longer able to enter the house of Europe through the front door, they'll keep making their way in through the back windows.
What we've witnessed in the past 25 or 30 years is just incredible. We've birthed 30,000 or 40,000 restaurants. I used to go to Europe every year to get experience [and ideas]. I don't go to Europe anymore. I go to Oregon, I go to Washington, I go to Louisiana, I go to Little Rock, I go to Austin, I travel New York City. I don't go to Europe anymore.
In Europe, kids learn at least four languages before they're out of high school. But our education system is so underfunded, they go to school to buy heroin and an AK-47.
I believe Europe is burning financially. Europe's problems are not going to go away. They are so structural. Yet, our problems are right behind them. We cannot just look at Europe.
Europe has grown through crises. Each crisis also presents opportunities, and Europe has emerged stronger from each one. That is the way history unfolds. Europe is sometimes slow, and it reacts sluggishly, but it is capable of finding solutions.
We don't look at teachers as scholars the way they do in Europe. In Spain you're called a professor if you're a high school teacher, and they pay teachers - they pay teachers in Europe.
We all need Europe, not just those of us in Europe. And we Germans need Europe more than the others. Germany is the country with the longest border, the most neighbours, and is, by population and economic strength, the number one in Europe.
What finally scuppered Napoleon's Europe was of course the fatal combination of the English Channel and the Russian winter; the same unlikely partnership that also did for Hitler's Europe.
What a thing, Europe. Europe! The cultured Europe! We are the barbarians, the Indians, the blacks, the southerners. How cynical is Europe. Chavez the tyrant! Chavez the strongman! Chavez, who wants to stay forever. While there, they have kings, my friend!
I believe that all the euphoria about Europe has led many of us to forget that Europe is a conglomerate of different entities and countries. But if you don't love your own entity, if you don't know your roots and can no longer relate to them, you will also have problems with the rest of Europe.
In this case [the Charlemagne Prize], I don't say (I was) forced, but convinced by the holy and theological headstrongness of Cardinal [Walter] Kasper, because he was chosen, elected by Aachen to convince me. And I said yes, but in the Vatican. And I said I offer it for Europe, as a co-decoration for Europe, a prize so that Europe may do what I desired at Strasburg; that it may no longer be "grandmother Europe" but "mother Europe."
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