Maria Semple Quotes

For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it's a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it's changing the world, like if 'This American Life' suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders.

In case you're unfamiliar with TED, it is a series of short lectures on a variety of subjects that stream on the Internet for free.

I attended TED in 2007 and 2008, the last two years the conference was held in Monterey.

It's actually harder than it looks to be a good pundit on the air. You've got to have stuff to say.

If you dig deep and keep peeling the onion, artists and freelance writers are the leaders in society - the people who start to get new ideas out.

I don't want to write a book; I don't want to go on T.V., because I stink at it. The only thing I have always been comfortable with is being in magazines.

I still can't believe that I went on 'The Colbert Report' myself; for the appearance I wore a lot of makeup, my hair was curled like a poodle's, and I could barely breathe in my Spanx undergarments. But, hey - an authoress has to lean in, right?

What we're always looking for is weird social issues and weird connections to make. Luckily for them, there's no shortage of material.

I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the 'Time Warp Trio' novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.

I would say almost 60 percent of working with Kanye - let's say 53 percent of working with Kanye - is speeches.

I never thought that I would co-host something at TED. I've been attending TED conferences since 2009, so I've been in the audience for many, many years, enjoying the very hard work of the TEDsters.

Every year, I come to TED prepared to roll my eyes a lot at the beginning, but knowing that at some point in the intellectual marathon, my brain will buckle to the cascade of ideas and bend to the painstakingly rehearsed presentations.

I'm lucky to be surrounded by incredibly talented people at Pixar, of course, and I learn a lot from them each and every day.

South Florida's international connections mean there's a different kind of innovation here. We're able to intersect with a lot of brilliant people who are not associated with Silicon Valley.

I love documentaries and TED talks.

It's weird: you do a TED talk on something, and people think that you suddenly have a lot of answers around the topic.

What's important to me is that I put messages out, whether it's a TED talk, whether it's a book.

It was in the mid-70's, '74 or '75 I started doing leadership conferences for pastors and in '79 I wrote my first book "Think On These Things".

I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003.

Writing a book isn’t an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life’s most satisfying achievements.

Opportunities are problems in search of solutions.

When I'm writing a book, I draw from my immediate experience, and my books are therefore almost a snapshot of where I am at that moment in my life.

Book ideas are like planes, lined up to approach the runway. Some never leave the gate, but others move quickly to the front of the line. It was like that with The Four Purposes. Honestly, I cannot remember the moment I had the idea for the book; perhaps because it emerged like a green shoot emerging from the soil of my subconscious. But it seemed important enough to begin the flow of words that eventually shaped themselves into this new book.

I think the reason that a lot of people have to have a lot of people around is just about being smart and knowing what you want to talk about.