black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Bonnie Jo Campbell

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

Class Country Drinking
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
All those are locked up tight, of course. We have a couple of pellet guns that get more use than the real guns.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

All Course Guns Locked More Tight
I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Specificity Thinking Writing
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
Mostly the natural landscapes work as a sounding board for my characters, so they can understand themselves, and it acts as a mirror in which we readers see ourselves.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

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

Heard Novel Percent
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

Daily Donkeys Emergency Gardening Smell
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 always felt a weird obligation to be adventurous.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

Adventurous Felt Obligation
Being five-foot-ten at fourteen years old was a little bit scary.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes