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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

I’m not much interested in my own self when I write. I’m interested in what I observe out there, what’s going on around me.

Bonnie Jo Campbell

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More Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes

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  So maybe nature also works as a metaphor for whatever emotional troubles my characters have to negotiate. I’m interested in my characters as survivors, and maybe that works best when the old-fashioned notion of humans surviving in wilderness is not too far away.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  BestCharacterEmotionalFashionedInterestedOldWork
• 

  I always felt a weird obligation to be adventurous.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  AdventurousFeltObligation
• 

  Since I’m living with the violence and trouble in my brain, it’s kind of a relief to write about it, to get it on paper, to put it in context, to find meaning in it.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  ContextMeaningTroubleViolence
• 

  Drugs and drinking affect every family I know, country and city, middle-class and poor.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  ClassCountryDrinking
• 

  The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn’t very good.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  TruthWritingYears
• 

  I do different work, teaching and running around visiting universities and bookstores, and that prevents me from writing. But it’s nice to be wanted as a writer.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  NiceRunningTeaching
• 

  A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you’re finished, it’s really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
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• 

  I was never a big reader as a kid. My imagination wasn’t captured by books very often. It was captured more often by boys and partying and riding horses.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  BookHorseParty
• 

  After a year, it was great to get out of L.A. and return to Hyde Park. Since my grandparents lived in Hyde Park, I had been coming there since I was a tyke.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  GrandparentHydeYears
• 

  I figure that I’m always going to be fine, one way or another, but I do worry about other people who have difficulty moving from one world to the next. It’s the folks who are truly invested in their lives who have the hardest time with change.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  ChangeHardestMovingPeopleWorry
• 

  I hope that my stories serve as explorations and help show readers how and why real-life women don’t always make the “correct” decisions in the face of economic and sexual troubles.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  DecisionEconomicsExplorationSexualTrouble
• 

  That was a mistake, I guess, going out to California. They have these things called guidance counselors in high school. They drink a lot of herbal tea.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  CaliforniaMistakeSchool
• 

  I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I’ve been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I’ve been pretty lucky.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  JobsRealThinking
• 

  The great thing about fiction is that I don’t have to settle on an answer to any troubling question, or even a solution.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  BrokenDecisionWriting
• 

  I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  BlackDegreesTraining
• 

  In fact, when I finally realized I was really going to write, when I was about thirty-four, I was working on my Ph.D. in Mathematics.

  BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
  FactFourRealizedWayWriting