The first stop on this crazy train is Kindergarten Junction, and nobody gets off until it pulls into Harvard Station. Maria Semple More Quotes by Maria Semple More Quotes From Maria Semple My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world. I always had a mind for characters and dialogue, and my head was filled with that stuff, so it seemed like a good place to start. Maria Semple good mind father world I don't know if it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm not going to be writing about Paris in the 1800s. I feel like it would come off as just ludicrously uninformed, even if I did a lot of research. Maria Semple feel failure research imagination