Top 160 Maria Semple Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Fast, Cheap, Good: Pick two.”

— Maria Semple

2. “The sooner you learn it’s on you to make life interesting, the better off you’ll be.”

— Maria Semple

3. “I have a high tolerance for pain, but a low tolerance for discomfort.”

— Maria Semple

4. “Have you ever heard that the brain is a discounting mechanism?”

— Maria Semple

5. “I’m not too good when exposed to people.”

— Maria Semple

6. “Then I realized, no, these are all homeless bums.”

— Maria Semple

7. “1. The choice of private schools is both fear-based and aspirational. Mercedes Parents are afraid their children won’t get “the best education possible,” which has nothing to do with actual education and everything to do with the number of other Mercedes Parents at a school. 2.”

— Maria Semple

8. “People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.”

— Maria Semple

9. “You bet your bindi that’s how big I want it.”

— Maria Semple

10. “I felt so full of love for everything. But at the same time, I felt so hung out there to dry, like nobody could ever understand. I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time.”

— Maria Semple

11. “I’d say I never considered myself a great architect. I’m more of a creative problem solver with good taste and a soft spot for logistical nightmares.”

— Maria Semple

12. “I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn’t fall, because Mom was in the world.”

— Maria Semple

13. “Smell the soup, cool the soup,” Timby said. “Huh?” “It’s what they teach us in school when we’re upset. Smell the soup.” He took a deep breath in. “Cool the soup.” He blew out.”

— Maria Semple

14. “This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russian Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.”

— Maria Semple

15. “Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.”

— Maria Semple

16. “The first stop on this crazy train is Kindergarten Junction, and nobody gets off until it pulls into Harvard Station.”

— Maria Semple

17. “You’re bored. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it’s boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it’s ON YOU to make life interesting, the better off you’ll be.”

— Maria Semple

18. “That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments between.”

— Maria Semple

19. “One of the main reasons I don’t like leaving the house is because I might find myself face to face with a Canadian.”

— Maria Semple

20. “Here’s something about Mom: she’s bad with annoyances, but great in a crisis. If a waiter doesn’t refill her water after she’s asked three times, or she forgets her dark glasses when the sun comes out, look out! But when it comes to something truly bad happening, Mom plugs into this supreme calm. I think she got it from all those years half living at Children’s because of me. I’m just saying, when things are bad, there’s nobody better to have in your corner than Mom.”

— Maria Semple

21. “The sky in Seattle is so low, it felt like God had lowered a silk parachute over us.”

— Maria Semple

22. “You try your best, or you don’t try your best. The mountains don’t care.”

— Maria Semple

23. “Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place. I don’t know if it’s possible to feel everything all at once, so much that you think you’re going to burst... I felt so full of love for everything. But at the same time, I felt so hung out to dry there, like nobody could ever understand. I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time.”

— Maria Semple

24. “But you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name anyway. That’s the risk. That’s the leap.”

— Maria Semple

25. “I hated my life enough without having to drive past a Buca di Beppo four times a day.”

— Maria Semple

26. “The mean boys huddled nearby, looking over, hoping my mom wouldn’t rat them out to their moms. Mom called to them, “That’s really original, I wish I’d thought of that.” I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn’t fall, because Mom was in the world.”

— Maria Semple

27. “How do I break it to you that people aren’t predictable? That life is confounding and sadistic in its cruelty? That when things go your way, it never makes you as happy as you’d expected, but when things go against you, it’s a cold-water jolt, an unshakable outrage that dogs you forever.”

— Maria Semple

28. “The world isn’t your friend,” Joe told Eleanor. “It’s not designed to go your way. All you can do is make the decision to muscle through and fight the trend.”

— Maria Semple

29. “Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place. I don’t know if it is possible to feel everything all at once, so much that you think you’re going to burst.”

— Maria Semple

30. “I love you, Bee,” Mom said. “I’m Trying. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

— Maria Semple

31. “As everybody knows, being raised Catholic with half a brain means becoming an atheist.”

— Maria Semple

32. “Actually, I bite the Milk Duds into four pieces and spit them back into the popcorn so they’re smaller, giving me a better popcorn-to-Milk-Dud ratio. Yes, they’re covered in saliva, but it’s my saliva. Though I can see how, to someone reaching into the popcorn he said he wasn’t going to eat, it could be an issue.”

— Maria Semple

33. “If you truly believed you had a benevolent bus driver, and you were certain he was taking you somewhere good, you could just settle in and appreciate the ride.”

— Maria Semple

34. “Remember all those things you hated about me when you were little? You hated when I sang. You hated when I danced. You really hated when I referred to that homeless guy with the dreadlocks who walked around the streets with a stack of blankets across his shoulders as “my brother.” You hated when I said you were my best friend. I now agree with you on that last one. I’m not your best friend. I’m your mother.”

— Maria Semple

35. “That when things go your way, it never makes you as happy as you’d expected, but when things go against you, it’s a cold-water jolt, an unshakable outrage that dogs you forever.”

— Maria Semple

36. “I think thats the most important job of a novelist – to bring authority to their writing.”

— Maria Semple

37. “Failure has got its teeth in me, and it won’t stop shaking.”

— Maria Semple

38. “The truth is complicated. There’s no way one person can ever know everything about another person.”

— Maria Semple

39. “It’s for survival. You need to be prepared for novel experiences because often they signal danger. If you live in a jungle full of fragrant flowers, you have to stop being so overwhelmed by the lovely smell because otherwise you couldn’t smell a predator. That’s why your brain is considered a discounting mechanism. It’s literally a matter of survival.” “That’s cool.”

— Maria Semple

40. “Maggie Shipstead’s prose is so graceful and muscular, so dazzling, so sure-handed and fearless, that at times I had to remind myself to breathe. Astonish Me is a treasure of small surprises.”

— Maria Semple

41. “Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: LOVE, NINA might be the most charming book I’ve ever read.”

— Maria Semple

42. “None of what’s become of me was Seattle’s fault. Well, it might be Seattle’s fault. The people are pretty boring. But let’s withhold final judgment until I start being more of an artist and less of a menace.”

— Maria Semple

43. “Hovering over me was the Chihuly chandelier. Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They’re everywhere and even if they don’t get in your way, you can’t help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them.”

— Maria Semple

44. “There was no relief deeper than being loved by the person who’d known you the longest.”

— Maria Semple

45. “People say Seattle is one of the toughest cities in which to make friends. They even have a name for it, the ‘Seattle freeze’.”

— Maria Semple

46. “People who don’t get seasick have no idea what it’s like. It’s not just nausea. It’s nausea plus losing the will to live.”

— Maria Semple

47. “After decades spent in rewrite rooms surrounded by other shouting writers, I discovered that I work best alone. I like being in charge of my time, working out the problems according to my own rhythms and being able to nap. That’s a big one, the napping on demand!”

— Maria Semple

48. “When your eyes are softly focused on the horizon for sustained periods, your brain releases endorphins. It’s the same as a runner’s high. These days, we spend our lives staring at screens twelve inches in front of us.”

— Maria Semple

49. “I asked Joe if he hated Ivy and Bucky. He said, “That would make as much sense as hating a rattlesnake. You don’t hate rattlesnakes; you avoid them.”

— Maria Semple

50. “I ran to Joe and pulled him in. I pushed my face into his jacket and breathed in the wool and dry-cleaning. Joe’s height was always a narcotic for me, the way my head hit him at the chest. I dug my fingers under his shoulder blades and turned my cheek so my nose touched flesh. The dampness of his clavicle, the tickle of his chest hair. The smell of Joe. My man.”

— Maria Semple