Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes

The happiest moments of my childhood were spent on my grandmother's front porch in Durham, N.C., or at her sister's farmhouse in Orange County, where chickens paraded outside the kitchen's screen door and hams were cured in the smokehouse.

Every child growing up will look to their parents, my mother and my father. My grandmother lived with us. I picked up quite a bit of family lore and history from her, which was interesting.

I enjoyed my grandparents very much. My mother and father would always allow me to stay with them.

I grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with my parents and sisters, but my family would drive every weekend to Hammonton, where both my grandparents lived and where my parents were raised.

My grandparents were classic Indian grandparents. My grandmother would put so much powder on her face that it was like a Kabuki play and she'd come down the stairs. I was like 8 or 9 years old. My grandfather apparently had no teeth because he would take out his teeth and put them in a glass, and then he would try to scare me with it. I started to try to scare them when I was a little older.

I pretty much grew up with my grandma. She would pull a stool over to the kitchen, and I would climb up at the kitchen counter, and I'd help her make biscuits.

I know Lukaku quite well. We are from the same city, and I've known him since we were quite young - maybe eight or nine. My best friend is his cousin.

I have family connections with Salisbury through my godmother. Her sister lived there, so I have very fond memories of visiting the city as a child.

As a child, we would all go to a tiny village near Burgos, and we'd have typical Spanish parties in the summer. There would be a band and grandparents dancing all night dressed up as American Indians and things like that.

Rajasthan is a place I visit very often. My grandparents live in the village called Kulhariyon Ka Baas, and I am originally from Rajasthan.

The first trip I can remember would have to be to Marianna, Arkansas. My mother's parents are from there, and we'd go every year to visit the church where they were buried. We'd attend church service that day, put flowers around their tombstones, and visit with family and friends that still lived there.

We're a really close family, and that was what my grandparents promoted.

I lived in Washington longer than I have lived anywhere else, so it's considered home, even though I moved back to California.

When we were kids, my favorite thing was coming to upstate New York where my family is from and hanging out with my grandparents' friends pre-Internet and them asking if we had stores or 'Do you have TV in Alaska?'

I lived in L.A. for a year when I was four - my dad was doing a sabbatical at UCLA - so it always remained quite a familiar place.

I was born in Kerala, where my maternal grandparents lived, and stayed there till the age of one, after which I came to Maharashtra to live with my parents and moved all around the state with my father, who worked as a superintendent in an ordnance factory.

I was raised on Marvin Gaye. Before I knew Babyface or anyone else, I knew Marvin Gaye. My mother played Marvin Gaye.

What interested me most about the Kennedys was the family situation. Somehow, they had created this family that lasted over time, they had a sense of connection to one another. Especially now, when people are spread all over the country and they don't see grandparents and parents, this family bonded together.

Far more disturbing than any spook house at an amusement park is a ride through the old hometown if you've been away for years.

In the presence of grandparent and grandchild, past and future merge in the present.

There is something about saying, 'We always do this,' which helps keep the years together. Time is such an elusive thing that if we keep on meaning to do something interesting, but never do it, year would follow year with no special thoughtfulness being expressed in making gifts, surprises, charming table settings, and familiar, favorite food. Tradition is a good gift intended to guard the best gifts.

I'm out there having as good a time as I did in the backyard since I was five-years-old.

His name was Michael R. Ross. I've never known what the "R" was for. He died, however, before I was 7. But he and I seemed to have had quite a nice relationship. He always called me grandlady, and he'd always talk to you as a person rather than as a child. So, I would go with him for his routes in his horse and buggy. So, my memory of him is pretty sharp, plus it has been accentuated by the stories that come out of the family.

My parents moved to Los Angeles when I was really young, but I spent every summer with my grandparents, and I'd stay with my grandfather on the farm in Longview. He was retired from the railroad, and he had a small farm with some cows and some pigs. I remember part of my youth was feeding hogs and plowing fields and stuff, so that's a part of me.

But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys.