Attention Quote by 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 there was so much work to do. Men didn't understand that there was nothing big enough to exempt you from your obligations, which began as soon as the sun rose over the paper company and ended only after you'd finished the day's chores and fell exhausted into sleep against the background noise of I-94.”

Bonnie Jo Campbell

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

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

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

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

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People seem to want to read more nonfiction than fiction.

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

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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…

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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…

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

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Cocoa-buttered girls were stretched out on the public beach in apparently random alignments, but maybe if a weather satellite zoomed in on one of those bodies and then zoomed back out, the photos would show the curving beach itself was another woman, a fractal image made up of the particulate sunbathers. All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses,…

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

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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…

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Explore all 71 Bonnie Jo Campbell quotes

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It appears to me that one great cause of our difference in opinion on subjects which we often discuss is that you have always…

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People pay far too much attention to the television and they're quite literal in some ways. At the beginning, when I was playing very…

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Television, radio, social media. The 24/7 news cycle plows forward mercilessly on our desks, in our cars and in our pockets. Thousands and thousands…

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By making conscious choices in our behavior and where we focus our attention, we can transform our experience of our body, decrease our biological…

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Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

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What people don't normally know about us is the hustle is very real, and it's sorely driven a lot by how we consider ourselves.…

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For me, the term "psychotherapy" is limiting. It implies that we work with mind and emotions, but excludes the body and pays scant attention…

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When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave…

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I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any…

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I went to a mosque in Philadelphia with [my wife] in December 24, 1999. And we we went to this mosque in Philly, and I just had such a strong reaction to the prayer. And I was really emotionally - I felt really grounded at that time. And so to be in this prayer and the imam is doing the…

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