Maria Semple

“I think a novel has to be about where you are at a given moment in time. I think it really needs to represent some specific pain you're going through. it's not just a story.”

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

“I naively thought I would quit television writing, move up to Seattle, my novel would come out, and then I'd have a novel writing career, and so I found myself really stuck in this very poisonous self-pitying state and felt like I'd never write again. And I blamed Seattle for that.”

“Writing a novel is so hard, and there are so many problems that the last thing you're thinking about is adapting this mess you have on your hands as a movie. You just want to get it to work as a novel. That's your main focus.”

“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.”

“My strength as a TV writer was my total lack of interest in television.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the only thing sweeter than seeing a friend is that friend canceling on me.”

“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'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.”

“I know what it's like to feel snobby; I know what it's like to feel anxiety; I know what it's like to feel like busted because you're crazy.”

“Was it happiness I'd found in my long marriage? Or capitulation? Or is that all happiness is, capitulation?”

“'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.”

“I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.”

“We need to preserve our neighborhoods, our small business, our local economy.”

“I always write authors after I read their books. I've been doing it for years. I write a formal letter and send it to them in care of their agent. My mother always taught us to write thank you notes, and if an author puts themselves out there, they like to hear that their book connected with someone.”

“It was important for me early on to find the voice of each character and figure out what was unique about them and their individual worldview that I could use for comedy or conflict.”

“I'm not the comedy police, but you watch a movie, and everyone's laughing, and then you shake it out, and you realize, 'There's no joke there!'”

“Even when I was writing 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' I started to appreciate Seattle's many charms.”

“'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' is an epistolary novel - one told in letters. I had no idea how much fun it would be, puzzling together the plot with letters and documents.”

“There's a happiness that comes from writing that I won't live without.”