Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes - Page 3

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• 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, 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

  Strong, Character, Emotional

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

• Mothers aren't allowed to have favorite children!

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Mother, Children

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Any of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence. We have to decide then to ignore the violence and create a gentler world in our fiction, or to heighten the violence through the use of point-of-view in order to explore it and gain some insight and understanding. 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

  Writing, Understanding, Brain

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The great thing about fiction is that I don't have to settle on an answer to any troubling question, or even a solution. I hope that my stories serve as explorations and help show readers how and why real-life women don't always make the "correct" decisions in the face of economic and sexual troubles. 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.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Writing, Broken, Decision

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Teaching, Writing, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Self, My Own

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Country, Drinking, Class

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Running, Nice, Teaching

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Black, Training, Degrees

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Class, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I like to go where the life is.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Life Is

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I'm pro-life, in the sense that chaos seems like life to me and order seems like death.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Order, Pro Life, Chaos

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I'm of the people in the bar and the people in my stories. They are my tribe.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  People, Bars, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I wasn't writing stories with the intention of creating a particular collection. I simply wrote stories, and then discovered common themes among a good number of them.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Writing, Creating, Numbers

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Skills, America

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Get Better, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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