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. — Mona Simpson Copy Share Image
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… — Mona Simpson Copy Share Image
“Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Does it improve upon the silence?” — Mona Simpson Copy Share Image
I've never had an exclusive relationship to a room where I write. I used to want one. — Mona Simpson Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later. — Mona Simpson Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
