Parents Said Quotes by Mona Simpson

“Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Does it improve upon the silence?”

— Mona Simpson

I've never had an exclusive relationship to a room where I write. I used to want one.

— Mona Simpson

I do have food in my books. Different people eat different ways.

— Mona Simpson

I grew up as an only child with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from…

— Mona Simpson

“A mother's happiness; something you recognize and then forget; it didn't seem to matter much, though it spread through our bodies.”

— Mona Simpson

I'm a simple cook, and there's a lot I don't eat. But food is important. It translates so easily into pleasure.

— Mona Simpson

I knew I would hate my best memory because it would prove that people could fake love or that love could end or worst…

— Mona Simpson

Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook,…

— Mona Simpson

In my 30s, I wrote in the back house of a ramshackle Spanish Revival we rented across from the ocean in the Santa Monica…

— Mona Simpson

I read a lot of books about psychopaths. I read a wonderful book Amy Hempel gave me about the guy who created criminal profiling…

— Mona Simpson

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

— Mona Simpson

I eventually made the reunion with my father that I'd used as a default daydream throughout my childhood, but by then, we'd both outgrown…

— Mona Simpson

I remember the excitement of finding a great pancake recipe in 'Gourmet.' It felt as if it were mine. And it was Berkeley, of…

— Mona Simpson

Gossip is essentially storytelling: storytelling about people whom we know.

— Mona Simpson

'Casebook' is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love.

— Mona Simpson