Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes

The trite answer is that everything is true but none of it happened. It is emotionally true, but the events, the plotting, the narrative, isn't true of my life, though I've experienced most of the emotions experienced by the characters in the play.

I'm a storyteller, and I was an actor, so I have a fairly thin grip on reality to begin with.

It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.

The novel does not simply recount experience, it adds to experience.

Now, what sort of person would write a scene where a young man stumbles upon a castle full only of beautiful young women? Answer: ME!

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.

Sri Lanka is a part of my background: it's not where I live, but it's what I want to explore. And I find it works very well to explore through fiction.

I love stories - devising them, writing them, reading them, watching them, being a part of them.

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.'

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is.

I just feel so lucky to tell stories and make up stories and share them with people.

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

Getting to share the stories in my head with other people and have them enjoy those stories, and having them come to see my characters as real. That's so cool.

Basically, I think of fiction and non-fiction as different ways of engaging with the world. You reach a point where you feel you have said all you possibly can, in reportage or a review essay or a reflection on history, which 'From the Ruins of Empire' was.

I'm thinking my next book should be set on a tropical island, which will obviously require days, even weeks of meticulous research, but I'm prepared to make that sacrifice. That's just the sort of dedicated writer I am.

Writers, all the good ones, are Natural Born Liars.

Fundamentally, I think of myself as a storyteller, not a writer.

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We seek, through our profession, to get those voices onto paper.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

I like to think of myself as a storyteller.