Any of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELLI 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.
More Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes
-
-
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 -
There are dozens of emails daily, gardening, lots of dishes (where do all these dishes come from?), daily family emergencies, and, of course, the petting of the donkeys. The smell of donkeys is heavenly, and their he-honking is the sweetest music. I feel calm just thinking about them.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
I always felt a weird obligation to be adventurous.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
I’m of the people in the bar and the people in my stories. They are my tribe.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic-love or war or a giant asteroid.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
You can’t beat a good sonnet, and you can write a sonnet without being married to the damned thing.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
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.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
I realized that I was writing about folks with lots of skills, especially fix-it skills and survival skills, who were nonetheless not doing well in the new-millennium America.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
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 -
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 -
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 -
The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn’t very good.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL -
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 -
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