Maria Semple Quotes

We are caught inside a mystery, veiled in an enigma, locked inside a riddle

Gravity Falls' is a riddle wrapped in an enigma tucked in a mystery deep-fried in a conundrum slathered in hickory-smoked puzzle sauce.

Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.

There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world.

Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)

He was a puzzle. And Hyacinth hated puzzles. Well, no, in truth she loved them. Provided, of course, that she solved them.

THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds.

Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.

I and this mystery, here we stand.

But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.

If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me.

Try to guess my answer to that question, however temptingly you pose it.

I'm a walking, talking enigma.

Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

First think of the person who lives in disguise, Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend, The middle of middle and the end of end? And finally give me the sound often heard During the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together, and answer me this, Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?

It is Mystery - the mystery any one man or woman can feel but not understand as the meaning of any event - or accident - in any life on earth.

More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?

Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance.

I love mysteries. To fall into a mystery and its danger ... everything becomes so intense in those moments. When most mysteries are solved, I feel tremendously let down. So I want things to feel solved up to a point, but there's got to be a certain percentage left over to keep the dream going. It's like at the end of Chinatown: The guy says, 'Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.' You understand it, but you don't understand it, and it keeps that mystery alive. That's the most beautiful thing.

Aren't you an enigma wrapped in a thick coating of contradictions.

I'm an enigma, an unknown.

Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking.

Every mystery ever solved had been a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it.