Maria Semple Quotes

Nobody tells people who are beginners - and I really wish somebody had told this to me - that all of us who do creative work... get into it because we have good taste.

I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.

I'm a record producer and songwriter; I'm a problem-solver.

I'm a DIY kinda guy.

Film work is a job I like to do because I really love to solve problems.

I see myself as a problem solver, creating solutions.

In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.

All the problems sitting there are an invitation for you to be creative, make use of your skills and resources and find a solution.

So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.

I think being a producer makes you a problem solver, so you kind of go, "Well there's a problem. What do we do? How do we solve it?"

See every problem as an opportunity to exercise creative energy.

The biggest problem is getting beyond the "you can't" syndrome. The moment you figure that out, you're on your way to flying. Anyone who cannot see problems around him or herself is utterly blind. All the problems sitting there are an invitation for you to be creative, make use of your skills and resources and find a solution.

There were the usual types of things that happen, in a production, like logistical bullshit, and this and that and the other. That's the sort of stuff that happened. But I never felt, in a creative sense, that we were ever veering into a place that I hadn't signed on for.

I think enjoying each other in a creative way is usually a result of when you're doing something that might be problematic - might be a little difficult to uncover. I've done it once in a stage production; we came in for two days and, just as an experiment, the director had us reading each other's roles. You hear another voice interpreting a line that maybe you were having trouble with. It can be very helpful. But we weren't really in the kind of situation where that was necessary.

Creative people have an abiding curiosity and an insatiable desire to learn how and why things work. They take nothing for granted. They are interested in things around them and tend to stow away bits and pieces of information in their minds for the future use. And, they have a great ability to mobilize their thinking and experiences for use in solving a new problem.

You need that same creative force that exists in a building like Disney [Walt Disney Concert Hall] to actually tackle that most prosaic of problems.

If we listen to the better angels of our nature, there are creative and good solutions to serious problems.

Design is a career where you learn creative decision making.

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all.

A man becomes creative, whether he is an artist or scientist, when he finds a new unity in the variety of nature. He does so by finding a likeness between things which were not thought alike before.

Taste has never been corrupted by simplicity.

The truth of actually working on a movie set is that you're in the midst of a logistical nightmare. There are so many things going on. There are many factors that keep your ideal scenario from ever happening. And you're rarely going to get that.

Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.

Good taste is the enemy of comedy.