Mona Simpson Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I am not attempting to preserve culture, or record actual events or stories. Instead I bow my head in gratitude to those storytellers who have gone before and paved a way for me play in their stomping grounds. Doubtless those who want to be offended, will - allowing me to make them happy, too, which pleases me as much as it pleases them.
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I love old books. They tell you stories about their use. You can see where the fingerprints touched the pages as they held the book open. You can see how long they lingered on each page by the finger stains.
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No one disputes Iran's destabilizing influence in the Middle East or role in killing Americans.
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Eudora Welty's 'A Curtain of Green' had an enormous effect on me. But my early attempts to graft stories from the Deep South onto North of England provincialism were not successful. All were rejected.
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So many of us are hungry for stories with more racial diversity, more truth in representation, and I am anxious to help tell those stories in the future.
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I love telling stories about people that don't normally get written about. It's a different kind of life here. This is a movie from the heart, and it's a little different from the normal movies you'll see.
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I haven't left my house in days. I watch the news channels incessantly. All the news stories are about the election; all the commercials are Viagra and Cialis. Election, erection, election, erection! Either way we're screwed!
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My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language; they're controlled, toward an end.
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When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me
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I love directing, It means so much to me to direct stories about subject matter that I care deeply about. I can act in many things, and you can try to experience different characters, but to direct is years of your life and you have to really love it and believe in it.
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I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.
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I have a boyfriend who knows how to settle me. He puts his hand on my chest and tells me boring stories. On one of our first nights together I woke up apologizing for my snoring and he pulled out two earplugs he had worn to bed so he could hear what I was saying.
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[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.
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Good stories flow like honey but bad stories stick in the craw [gullet]. What is a bad story? It's a story that cannot be absorbed in the first time of reading. It's a story that leaves questions unanswered.
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I have watched constantly that in our work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether my productions deal with fable or with stories of living action.
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You had bands like D.O.A., or Black Flag, and a whole network opened up to trailblazer a counter culture movement. I'm more interested in the less sensational type of stories.
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The biggest problem in the fictional treatment of sex is that it's not treated as part of the story but as a pause from the story. The best sex scenes in fiction are the ones that advance the story.
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It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories.
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In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...
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Over and over, we begin again.
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Jesus didn't wait until we got better to die for us. He died when we were in our most unlovely state. The person who doesn't deserve love actually needs love more, not less. If you know someone unworthy of love, that's great! You now have a chance to emulate Christ, because the essence of His love is unconditional.
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Changing writing styles is like an actor taking on a different part.
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I kind of miss that "becoming" stage, as most times you really don't know what's around the corner. Now, of course, I've kind of knocked on the door and heard a muffled answer. Nevertheless, I still don't know what the voice is saying, or even what language it's in.
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We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
