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 CAMPBELLDrugs and drinking affect every family I know, country and city, middle-class and poor.
More Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes
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We all screw up, but the women I write about don’t have back-up plans or money in the back or resources to fix what they have broken.
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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 -
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.
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Men didn’t understand that you couldn’t let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when there was so much work to do.
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Any of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence.
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I’ve worked behind counters serving food, and I’ve lived on the circus train, and I’ve led bicycle tours in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and Russia. I’ve been a key liner for a newspaper, I’ve done typesetting. Oh, all sorts of things.
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Eighty percent of all novels are bought by women, or so I’ve heard.
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I’m very interested in people who are in a situation that needs a little puzzling out. The thing that gets me started on a story is a person in a tough situation.
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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.
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Writing is so wrapped up in ego, but with math one is just trying to get it right, although you’re often wrong. I think math helped me become a good critic of myself, come at writing a little less personally.
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The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn’t very good.
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A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you’re finished, it’s really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.
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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.
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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.
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I mostly write about the working poor. Somehow, they’re not being written about much anymore.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL