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
although came cared deal family foods great grew money original single stores
I grew up with a single mother, and although we didn't have a lot of money, she cared a great deal about what we ate. We were the original health-food family. We shopped at what were called health-food stores before Whole Foods - everything came from bins.
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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.
left lived midwest small town twelve
I left the Midwest when I was twelve years old, and I haven't lived in a small town since.
believer life using works
I'm a believer in using whatever works for fiction, but mostly, that's not life.
children gave home kids large raising routines stayed together women
We go to college, live together or marry, and have kids - often with little more thought to the daily routines of raising children than our grandparents gave them, when women by and large stayed at home.
life love man met waiting
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.
good hearts love vulnerable
Even more than we want good love for ourselves, we want it for our children, those vulnerable satellites of our hearts that we send, unsteady, into the world.
relationship
I've never had an exclusive relationship to a room where I write. I used to want one.
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.
grew imagined knew looked poor single
I grew up as an only child with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif.
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My first job was to run a concessions cart. Later, I found a position at the Pacific Film Archive. Thus began a long series of jobs, each one slightly better than the last, that continued for a decade, until I sold my first novel, and still goes on, even now.
affluent cream felt job steady worked
I felt like any other American kid. I already worked at a steady job as an ice cream scooper, but I didn't feel less in any way than my more affluent friends from school.
rights
The more you learn about animals and animal rights - it's an intriguing, fascinating world.
divorce jane less love time
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.