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Motherhood Quote by O. J. Simpson

"I could not tell you the date of my mother's death. I could not tell you the date of my dad's death. These are not dates that I find significant"

About this Quote

There is a chilling normalcy in the way Simpson shrugs off his parents' death dates, as if grief were just another stat he never bothered to track. Coming from an athlete whose public identity was built on discipline, memory, and performance, the line lands less like honest forgetfulness and more like a crafted refusal: a statement designed to control what counts as meaningful.

The intent reads defensive. When someone emphasizes that certain dates are "not significant", they're not merely describing their inner life; they're managing an audience's suspicion. Death dates are cultural anchors, the kind of detail people expect you to carry even when you can't carry much else. By disavowing them, Simpson tries to reframe intimacy as optional and sentiment as overrated. It's a subtle repositioning of the self: I'm not the kind of person who performs mourning on cue.

The subtext is what makes it work, and what makes it unsettling. It's not "I don't remember" but "I don't care to remember". That shift moves the question from memory to values. In the shadow of Simpson's broader public narrative, it also functions as an alibi of character: if I can't recall those dates, don't read precision or meaning into other dates either. The line weaponizes indifference.

Context matters because celebrity is a courtroom of vibes. Simpson's notoriety turned every personal detail into evidence, every emotional beat into a credibility test. This quote resists that economy, but it also exposes it: even the most basic markers of family loss become contested terrain when your life has been made into a national true-crime obsession.

Quote Details

TopicFamily
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Simpson, O. J. (2026, January 15). I could not tell you the date of my mother's death. I could not tell you the date of my dad's death. These are not dates that I find significant. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-could-not-tell-you-the-date-of-my-mothers-death-159295/

Chicago Style
Simpson, O. J. "I could not tell you the date of my mother's death. I could not tell you the date of my dad's death. These are not dates that I find significant." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-could-not-tell-you-the-date-of-my-mothers-death-159295/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I could not tell you the date of my mother's death. I could not tell you the date of my dad's death. These are not dates that I find significant." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-could-not-tell-you-the-date-of-my-mothers-death-159295/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by J. Simpson Add to List
O J Simpson: On Dates, Memory, and Grief
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About the Author

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O. J. Simpson (born July 9, 1947) is a Athlete from USA.

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