Maria Semple Quotes

There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

I think we shouldn't buckle up our creativity. You've got to experiment!

The nature of creativity is to make space for things to happen... We can drive it out with our busyness and plans.

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

I go wherever my creativity takes me.

Art is not predictable. Art is not golf, as great as that may be. There are 360 degrees of choice to make.

It's really fun to just stretch out and not have any boundaries or just try something for the craft.

Love color. Take risks. Stay curious.

When you're really having fun, you're always doing it a little bit in a way that you're not supposed to. That's when great things happen.

I would just stand there puzzled, then realize this would be a great place to make a show.

Not to be boxed in, to be able to transcend boundaries: for an artist, it's essential.

If you confine it, you're confining a whole thing. If you make it spontaneous, so that anything can happen, like we don't want to confine or restrict anything. What we can do, whatever we can let happen, you just let it happen.

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

You have to free your mind to do things you wouldn't think of doing. Don't ever say no.

The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon.

I'd rather play here in this small bar and just do a good show. Because it's fun and there's no expectations, it's encouragement to be different, do something new.

Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere.

Anything that is impractical can be play. It's doing something other than what is necessary to continue living as an animal.

True creativity often starts where language ends.

In life, a lot of great ideas sound insane or absurd at first.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

Spontaneity, the hallmark of childhood, is well worth cultivating to counteract the rigidity that may otherwise set in as we grow older.

Once in a while, I do these things that would make the 10-year old version of me laugh. I don't know why. You've got to do something a little bit immature. I'm surprised at how often those are my best ideas.

Australians don't have a preconceived notion of what things have to be... we can go on a fantastic journey.

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.'