black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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

Truth Writing Years
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

Broken Decision Writing
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 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
Nobody tells young writers it’s okay if you’re not very good, you’ll get better. So I just thought I’m not very good, so I should try to do every other thing besides writing. That’s how I ended up being a hitchhiker, a world traveler, and a mathematician.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Better Trying Writing
I’m of the people in the bar and the people in my stories. They are my tribe.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Bars People Stories
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
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
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

Context Meaning Trouble Violence
Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Bars Man Men Old
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’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
I thought that you had to learn to write by yourself and if you couldn’t do it, then you were out of luck.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Luck Thought 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
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
Eighty percent of all novels are bought by women, or so I’ve heard.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Heard Novel Percent

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes