Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes

I've done a lot of sci-fi, so I was a little hesitant because you get pigeonholed into that genre and world. But at the same time, I love sci-fi because the women are so strong and independent and smart.

Male playwrights, on the whole, are probably more interested in male characters. They need women characters to be the women in their lives or to be the domestic difficulty.

I've only written two novels, neither of them published, where the book is dominated by a male point of view; in the 'Onyx Court' series, it's split roughly 50/50.

As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.

I just love the fact that a man possesses something that a woman can never understand because we don't have the experiences of it and that a woman possesses something that the man doesn't understand because only she possesses it.

What's funny about that is when I was writing Twilight just for myself and not thinking of it as a book, I was not thinking about publishing, and yet at the same time I was casting it in my head. Because when I read books, I see them very visually.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

Working on 'Downton Abbey' is amazing, but there's an ensemble cast of between 18 and 21 actors. With 'Love Life,' there are two couples and a few other key characters. As a smaller unit, you've got to take more responsibility - at the same time, you can have more ownership of the direction it's going in.

I'd love to do something where I can act and dance at the same time, like on Broadway or in movies.

If you don't care for the villain, if you don't love him and hate him at the same time, then he's just boring.

When you're acting and directing, you're standing there acting with another actor, and you're trying to do your performance, and at the same time you're watching their performance, and making sure the lights are in the right place, and if the person is wearing the right wardrobe. All these things are going on in your head.

I want to be true to the character and maintain some consistency and give the audience what they love while at the same time keeping things fresh and grow the character.

I love playing strong women, even if they're nuts.

I love to read different books on completely different subjects at the same time. I cannot focus on one. I read a few pages of literature, then I jump to philosophy and at the same time I'm reading biographies of Mahler.

I really like getting inside the heads of female characters. I think I can do that well, and I enjoy it.

They say that Grandma Moses had several canvases going at the same time. Maybe it was a way for her to catch up with the time she missed while raising children and tending the farm. Like Grandma, I tend to have more than one poem or fiction going at a time. For me, it's just the way I think.

When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant.

This is my ultimate fantasy: watching QVC with a credit card while making love and eating at the same time.

I love flawed characters, male or female, and I only want to talk about flawed characters, really, in what I do.

The thing I love about acting is that you can bring something very personal into the open and at the same time remain hidden because you're always playing a character in a story that someone else has imagined. You're always protected.

People focus on the darker female characters in my books, but for every one of those, I can also show you an equally screwed up man that no one ever comments about, or a nicer woman that no one comments about. I don't feel like that's my specialty.

I never outline my novels before I write. I do have a vague sense of beginning, middle, and end at the outset of each book, but for me, writing has always been a very character-driven process.

I think you leave your imprint on every screenplay. I like to bring my experience as a woman to all my female characters that hopefully makes them a little more layered and complex.

I think there's something inherently different about working with females. I mean, it's just a different way of looking at life, being a woman. But I think we can handle many things at one time and I don't think that's necessarily true for men.

Should men and women be equal in all things? Absolutely. But I'm old-fashioned in that I like the differences between the sexes. My male characters are neither Neanderthals nor Prince Charmings. They're flawed.