Maria Semple Quotes

Going by my past journey, I am not certain where life will take me, what turns and twists will happen; nobody knows where they will end up. As life changes direction, I'll flow with it.

It's funny where life can take you.

For me, New York has always been a city of unpredictability. You can never guess what's going to happen next.

Life has a way of creeping up on us.

Life has many turns.

Life will take you in all kinds of unexpected directions and it certainly did with me.

Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never have imagined.

You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place.

I went through an experience that taught me that as soon as you think that you know how your life is going to be, something in the universe will make you realize that you really are not that in control of it.

Political life loves some volatility.

How incredibly far our lives drift from where we knew with all certainty they would go. How little today resembles what yesterday thought it would look like.

We do not always get what we want. Sometimes life presents us with surprises.

My whole life has largely been one of surprises.

Don't take anything for granted, because tomorrow is not promised to any of us.

Life itself is a haphazard, untidy, messy affair.

The world is like that -- incomprehensible and full of surprises .

Affairs go on, and all will take some shape or other, but it keeps one in hot water all the time.

Life has a way of doing that; one minute everything makes sense, the next, things change. People get sick. Families break apart, your friends could close the door on you.

That's the funny thing about life. We're rarely aware of the bullets we dodge. The just-misses. The almost-never-happeneds. We spend so much time worrying about how the future is going to play out and not nearly enough time admiring the precious perfection of the present.

Imagine a world where nothing is stable. In the West, we have three moving elements -- Air, Fire, Water -- but at least we can depend on the fourth.

You can lead a happy life if you recognize that it's limited and completely unpredictable from one moment to the next.

The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.

The twenty-first century is, and will remain, the Age of Insecurity.

Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has.

The most persistent principles in the universe are accident and error.