Mona Simpson
Mona Simpson
Mona Elizabeth Simpson is an American novelist. She has written six novels and is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angelesand the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth14 June 1957
CityGreen Bay, WI
CountryUnited States of America
across along driveway house human monica pages revival santa side spanish steal thousands wrote
In my 30s, I wrote in the back house of a ramshackle Spanish Revival we rented across from the ocean in the Santa Monica Canyon. I wrote thousands of pages there, but in order to see another adult human being, I had to steal out through the brambly side of the house, along the driveway down to the street.
deeply draw felt powerful prince
I've never felt powerful enough to write a true political novel, or deeply knowledgeable enough to draw a character like, say, Tolstoy's Prince Kutuzov.
actual best closer dedicated habit instead ritual texts trigger trust
Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true.
cultural love people
We have all these cultural assumptions about love. People get hurt, and we say, 'Oh, it's no one's fault.'
authentic discussion engaged national politics
We're all looking for an authentic way to be engaged in the community, engaged in politics, engaged in national discussion - and so, we're clunky. We're all clunky. But it's better than not doing it.
beautiful fashion art
Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.
writing white ties
Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.
father america grew
Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working.
grandmother faces mouths
In every person's face, there is one place that seems to express them most accurately. With my grandmother, you always looked at her mouth.
morning writing night
I unplug the phone and close the door and just stick with it. I don't ever go out for lunch and I don't take vacations. I like to be awake when no one else is: either just before dawn in the morning or late, late at night. Silence helps.
brother father men
Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
forever world chunks
We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.
memories powerful hate
I knew I would hate my best memory because it would prove that people could fake love or that love could end or worst of all, love was not powerful enough to change a life.
agreed brought clients high los school speech stay weekend
When I was in high school in Los Angeles, my mother, who was a speech therapist, agreed to stay over the weekend with one of her clients and his little sister while the parents went away on vacation. She brought me along.