Home > Author > Bonnie Jo Campbell
1 " It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic--love or war or a giant asteroid. Every man wanted to be a hot-headed Bruce Willis character, fighting against the evil foreign enemy while despising the domestic bureaucracy. Men just wanted to focus on one big thing, leaving the thousands of smaller messes for the women around them to clean up. "
― Bonnie Jo Campbell , American Salvage
2 " 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, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense. "
3 " 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. "
4 " All the men added together made the solid world-- they were the marbles in the jar, and women were whatever sand or water or air claimed the space left between them. That's how I saw things as a young woman, that was my women's studies. Now I've come to know that women are like vodka poured over men, who melt away like ice cubes. "
― Bonnie Jo Campbell
5 " And loving a new person might even eventually dull the pain of having lost the people you have loved before, even if it didn't happen as quickly as you wanted it to. (p 99) "
6 " The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane's heart. "
― Bonnie Jo Campbell , Once Upon a River
7 " I’ve never shot like that in my life. That’s unholy.” Uncle Cal claimed credit for teaching her to shoot, but while Margo had felt his guidance, she had felt just as strongly the guidance of the gun itself. It held her steady, and then sadness perfected her aim. "
8 " It's hard enough to figure out how to live ... without worrying about what the hell's normal. "
9 " She hoped Smoke was wrong about people being unknowable. She hoped that she could crack herself open like a nut and know herself, at least. Then she'd be able to start figuring out everybody else. "
10 " I've got a head full of stories you still need to hear, starting with my ribs, ending with my whole life. "
― Bonnie Jo Campbell , Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories
11 " Lazarus arises! "
12 " You’re not supposed to have salt.” “I’m not supposed to have cancer, either. If you don’t bring me some brandy, I’m kicking you off my property. "
13 " reasonableness and positivity can feel like a kind of bullying. "
