Mona Simpson Quotes

I didn't actually get along with my dad when I was growing up, so by the time I was in my 20s, I didn't think I was going to be a writer.

My father wasn't too crazy about me. I loved him anyway. One of the things I regretted for a long time was that he died before he could see that he would be proud of me. I was actually more what he wished for than he thought.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

My father wasn't around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, 'Why me? Why don't I have a father? Why isn't he around? Why did he leave my mother?' But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, 'I don't know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?'

'I Know You Care' is about my dad. And I haven't seen him for a long, long time. And my parents divorced when I was really young. And I guess I just wanted a - it was my way of saying that I wasn't bitter or angry anymore. I was just sad and just felt like something was missing.

I know I should feel anger at my father for certain things. But since he died when I was 11, I never got to that point.

The whole time I was on 'Grey's,' I'm still reconciling myself to my 11-year-old son, because he never saw me during that time. By the time he got up, he'd see a dent in his pillow, but by the time I got home, he was already asleep. So for three years, he had a daddy that he never saw because I had to work.

You need to be emotionally ready for a baby, and the best way to do that is to clean skeletons from your own closest. Deal with the baggage of your childhood, or you'll just pass it on to your kid.

I think it's a pity for him that my father didn't have the pleasure of seeing me grow up. I think he missed out on something. But it doesn't matter. It's boring. I don't have any anger about it.

Not having a great relationship with my brother Aaron, or what people think that relationship should be, didn't define me.

I always wanted to play with my brothers, but they never let me and always bullied me. The bonding with my brothers happened only after we went our separate ways. That's when we understood the value of each other. Now, we talk a lot.

You know, when you have a father who's pretty well known but you don't see him, the last thing you want to do is start talking about him all the time to people.

I was an only child of a father who loved me deeply, but we didn't play catch, even though I was an athlete. We didn't go fishing or hunting or any of the things I wanted to do. Why not? He just didn't do that.

I know that I will never find my father in any other man who comes into my life, because it is a void in my life that can only be filled by him.

I'm still grappling with all the things most people resolve by the time they're 35. Maybe that's why I make music that is relevant to young people. I'm emotionally stuck at the age of 13.

My dad never explained anything growing up.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

Maybe we slip so easily into blaming our parents - you're perpetually a child and they're perpetually a parent and you long to balance the equation, but it can only be balanced posthumously.

The principal event of my childhood was that no adult in my family would tell me who my father was.

There's a book called 'The Shack' - it had a lot to do with me coming full circle, meeting my birth mother. Awhile back, my birth mom and my adopted mom came to my show together, and it was pretty surreal.

I hated Chris, my brother. I would pull his hair and kick him, until one day my father gave him permission to fight back. I'll be apologizing to him for the rest of my life.

I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It's a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It's not something that happens overnight. It's an evolution of the heart.

I missed my dad a lot growing up, even though we were together as a family. My dad was really a workaholic. And he was always working.

My most vivid memory of my father centers on the day he left. It was warm, and my mother was especially short with Rhonda and me that afternoon, which I attributed to the heat. I was oblivious to the mounting hostilities in our basement apartment.

In some ways, I've been left with this great 'idolic' image of my father, but there's a sense of absence, too. You miss his advice and, also, his getting to know the person I have become.