67 Quotes by Mona Simpson

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.

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.

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.

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.

If a mother is sitting in a chair at the office, someone needs to be at home with her child. In some cases, that is a father. Much of the time, the material manifestation of the conflict is a nanny.

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 the only relationship we could have had to each other. I was over 30 by the time I met him again and no longer needed a father.

I suppose 'My Hollywood' is only as politically meaningful as it is deeply inside the least powerful of its characters. I wanted it to reveal scenes of subtle exploitation, odd instances of accidental power and challenges to decency specific to its time, but also impulses of generosity that transcend our particular era's messes.

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.

We have all these cultural assumptions about love. People get hurt, and we say, 'Oh, it's no one's fault.'