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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

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

Book Horse Party
Drugs and drinking affect every family I know, country and city, middle-class and poor.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Class Country Drinking
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

Beautiful Proof Stories
We know that we need to explore desire in fiction – many say that the only way a story exists is that a character feels a strong desire – and nature is the place where creatures act on their desires in the most pure way imaginable.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Character Emotional Strong
When I was little, we lived on 8 acres and my mom had a horse. But when I was 7, my mom kicked my dad out, and then in order to feed us five kids, she got critters cheap or for free and raised them for food.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Dad Horse Kicked Kids Mom Order
My normal writing day involves three hours of actual writing, before noon, and the rest is just feeding the writing. There is teaching (so I can afford to write), travel to be planned and executed.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Teaching Thinking Writing
My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They’re very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Cautiousness People Smart
In a regular class I don’t focus on the form, but I think that focus is helpful for brainstorming and coming up with ideas quickly, especially with autobiographical material.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Class Ideas Thinking
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

Best Character Emotional Fashioned Interested Old Work
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

Change Hardest Moving People Worry
I’m of the people in the bar and the people in my stories. They are my tribe.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Bars People Stories
It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic-love or war or a giant asteroid.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Character Fighting War
I was just about to earn my Master’s along the way, but I knew something was wrong because I found myself crying all the time.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Crying Found Master Nobody Something Tell
For ‘King Cole’s American Salvage,’ I rode around in the wrecker with a local driver and watched him deal with customers and hook up the cars.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Car Hook Kings Love Watched
You can’t beat a good sonnet, and you can write a sonnet without being married to the damned thing.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Beats Married Writing
If you have someone falling out of the boat, you’d have to drag the boat up the river and film the same scene ten times, every time, dragging the boat exactly where it was up the river.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Boat Fall Film Rivers Scene Time
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

California Mistake School
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

Much Own Self Writing
Any of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Brain Understanding Writing
As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Findings Mind Portions
That’s why I have to be a fiction writer, because I can’t remember what just happened or where I went last week or what movie I just watched with my husband. I’m better off just making things up.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Fiction Husband Lasts
The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn’t very good.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Truth Writing Years
I always felt a weird obligation to be adventurous.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Adventurous Felt Obligation
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

Grandparent Hyde Years
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

Nice Running Teaching
The natural world is the place into which all my characters have to situate themselves in order to be who they really are, and that makes my rural fiction feel different from a lot of urban fiction.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Character Function Order Themselves Urban
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

Jobs Real Thinking

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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