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
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It's a different thing to write a love story now than in the time of Jane Austen, Eliot, or Tolstoy. One of the problems is that once divorce is possible, once break-ups are possible, it can all become a little less momentous.
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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.
rights
The more you learn about animals and animal rights - it's an intriguing, fascinating world.
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I read a lot of books about psychopaths. I read a wonderful book Amy Hempel gave me about the guy who created criminal profiling - a fascinating book, 'Mind Hunter.'
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I remember the excitement of finding a great pancake recipe in 'Gourmet.' It felt as if it were mine. And it was Berkeley, of course - everybody cooked together. Cooking is what one did.
easily food
I'm a simple cook, and there's a lot I don't eat. But food is important. It translates so easily into pleasure.
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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.
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In our national mythology, we seem to include only one-way migrations to the great capitol cities. The journey from the small Wisconsin town or Minnesota city to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. Certainly for some people, that journey is a round trip.
computers
I didn't know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
people
Gossip is essentially storytelling: storytelling about people whom we know.
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I left the Midwest when I was twelve years old, and I haven't lived in a small town since.
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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.
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The lawyer refused to tell me my brother's name, and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James - someone more talented than I: someone brilliant without even trying.
food people
I do have food in my books. Different people eat different ways.