Bonnie Jo Campbell

In fact, when I finally realized I was really going to write, when I was about thirty-four, I was working on my…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

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

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

A Life in Men is a joyful, ambitious novel that is also an adventure traversing three continents, as well as a meditation…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

People seem to want to read more nonfiction than fiction.

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

Eighty percent of all novels are bought by women, or so I've heard.

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

Any of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence. We have to…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

In a regular class I don't focus on the form, but I think that focus is helpful for brainstorming and coming up…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

Cocoa-buttered girls were stretched out on the public beach in apparently random alignments, but maybe if a weather satellite zoomed in on…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

I think back when I was kind of a crappy writer, I really did know my time was better spent working and…

— 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…

— 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.…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

“She hoped Smoke was wrong about people being unknowable. She hoped that she could crack herself open like a nut and know…

— 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…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

Mostly the natural landscapes work as a sounding board for my characters, so they can understand themselves, and it acts as a…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

Some people tell me they would be afraid of my characters, but I tell those people [that] they meet these characters all…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

“And loving a new person might even eventually dull the pain of having lost the people you have loved before, even if…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

I was unhappy and I couldn't figure out what was the matter. And he told me to go take a writing course.…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

Men didn't understand that you couldn't let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

That's why I have to be a fiction writer, because I can't remember what just happened or where I went last week…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

I like to go where the life is.

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

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

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

The best and easiest lesson for me was to learn that writing is mostly hard work.

— Bonnie Jo Campbell

“I’ve never shot like that in my life. That’s unholy.” Uncle Cal claimed credit for teaching her to shoot, but while Margo…

— Bonnie Jo Campbell