Quote

When I was little, we lived on 8 acres and my mom had a horse. But when I was 7, my mom kicked my dad out, and then in order to feed us five kids, she got critters cheap or for free and raised them for food. We milked a cow, raised chickens, pigs and beef cattle. We heated our one-story house with wood and stayed cold all winter.

Bonnie Jo Campbell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bonnie Jo Campbell
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 14
Novelist
Writer
Kalamazoo
Michigan
Free
Mom
Wood
Critters
House
Horse
Cows
Heated
Order
Raised
Chickens
Acres
Kids
Lived
Cheap
Kicked
Stories
Cold
Feed
Cattle
Littles
Food
Woods
Beef
Little
Five
Winter
Pigs
Story
Dad
Stayed
Milked

More quotes by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Image
I'm pro-life, in the sense that chaos seems like life to me and order seems like death.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
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
Image
I like to go where the life is.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
Eighty percent of all novels are bought by women, or so I've heard.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
I read stories aloud at every stage. I listen to my writer friends when they kindly offer criticism. I listen to my husband when he tells me something doesn't seem right. I have my mother's boyfriend, Loring Janes, read to make sure I get everything right with the machines and guns.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
I can't personally drink or fight too much nowadays because I have to be perky in the morning in order to write.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
That's why I have to be a fiction writer, because I can't remember what just happened or where I went last week or what movie I just watched with my husband. I'm better off just making things up.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
Donkeys are the most misunderstood and abused animals around the world.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
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
Image
I think back when I was kind of a crappy writer, I really did know my time was better spent working and having adventures and seeing the world.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
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, and a pile of scrap metal.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
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
Image
Mothers aren't allowed to have favorite children!
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
Where I live you're not supposed to shoot a firearm within a quarter mile of a dwelling.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
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
Image
You can't beat a good sonnet, and you can write a sonnet without being married to the damned thing.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
I mostly write about the working poor. Somehow, they're not being written about much anymore. I'm very interested in people who are in a situation that needs a little puzzling out. The thing that gets me started on a story is a person in a tough situation.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Image
We have a shotgun we inherited from my father-in-law, a paranoid Englishman living in Texas. I have a .22 Marlin rifle, similar to the one Annie Oakley had, and my husband has a .357 Magnum pistol. 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