Tawni O'Dell Quotes

#1. I don't try to sugarcoat things, but I also think my books make positive statements about the people and values in small-town America.

Tawni O'Dell

#2. People, including me, can get so detached from everything, but when you can focus on a defined place, a home, it gets you back in touch.

Tawni O'Dell

#3. I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

Tawni O'Dell

#4. She told me once she envied the women who lived back in the good old days who only had to worry about Indians and mountain lions killing their husbands. Something about those things being beyond a wife's control.

Tawni O'Dell

#5. She hated her job the same way I hated my jobs because she knew she was worth more, but she also hated herself so there wasn't much point in trying to do better.

Tawni O'Dell

#6. When you live in a community where people know you, it makes you want to be good and decent. It's a strong influence.

Tawni O'Dell

#7. Oh, God," Shannon moans. "We have to boil water," I tell Kenny. "She wants Cup-a-Soup?" "No, it's to sterilize things." "What's that?" I start rummaging through my house looking for anything useful. I get a knife, scissors, salad tongs, clothespins, a bottle of whiskey. Kenny

Tawni O'Dell

#8. Here I am, this smart, bookish girl, and I have this biker-chick name.

Tawni O'Dell

#9. I saw myself as a writer, a novelist, even though I was living the life of a mother and housewife. Writing was - and is - what I do.

Tawni O'Dell

#10. I've decided that the worst part of loneliness isn't being alone. It's being forgotten.

Tawni O'Dell

#11. Maybe over time I'll forget the feel and smell and sound of him, the same way I am starting to forget Mom, but I'll never be able to forget that he should've been here.

Tawni O'Dell

#12. You and I have never shared a bank account or a child or a bed. But you are my wife.

Tawni O'Dell

#13. I really, really missed the Pennsylvania countryside and hills.

Tawni O'Dell

#14. Coal mining is an industry rife with mismanagement, corruption, greed and an almost blatant disregard for the safety, health and quality of life of its work force. Everyone knows this. Everyone has always known it.

Tawni O'Dell

#15. Mining is a dangerous profession. There's no way to make a mine completely safe: These are the words owners have always used to excuse needless deaths and the words miners use to prepare for them.

Tawni O'Dell

#16. Nothing shatters the reality of our good intentions like reality.

Tawni O'Dell

#17. I don't like phones. You can't be sure people are paying attention to you when you're talking to them.

Tawni O'Dell

#18. Writing an essay is like a school assignment: I have my topic, I organize my thoughts, and I write it. I have complete control over what I'm doing. Writing a novel is like setting out on a journey without knowing who or what I'll encounter, how long it's going to take, or where I'm going to end up.

Tawni O'Dell

#19. It turned out I really didn't like journalism. I wanted to make up stories, not cover real events.

Tawni O'Dell

#20. A man spends his whole life trying to prove his worth to others. A woman spends her life trying to prove her worth to herself.

Tawni O'Dell

#21. They were like English teachers who took the fun out of a perfectly good book by breaking it down into themes and sentence structures

Tawni O'Dell

#22. I wanted to end it now, like a bad TV show turned off in the middle.

Tawni O'Dell

#23. The image I had was that Oprah books were fluffy.

Tawni O'Dell

#24. I learned the most important aspect of a mother's love was not the intensity but its reliable consistency.

Tawni O'Dell

#25. I write literary, not commercial, fiction - or so I've been told by my publishers who are proud I write literary fiction but secretly wish I wrote commercial.

Tawni O'Dell

#26. She's sitting propped up on the

Tawni O'Dell

#27. My mind is constantly creating and searching, but I can't make myself put the right words on paper until I'm ready. Once I'm ready, I'm a focused, disciplined writer who will put in twelve hours a day at the computer, but I also spend a lot of time away from the computer getting to that point.

Tawni O'Dell

#28. Each time a new disaster puts miners in the news, the press tries to make them into heroes, but they don't quite fit the bill. They don't march off to war or rush into burning buildings or rid our streets of crime.

Tawni O'Dell

#29. Never give up on your dream ... Perseverance is all important. If you don't have the desire and the belief in yourself to keep trying after you've been told you should quit, you'll never make it.

Tawni O'Dell

#30. My experience growing up in a rough and tumble town in the blue-collar world of Western Pennsylvania in the 1970s was that anything a man did was always more important than anything a woman did.

Tawni O'Dell

#31. I let my soul be corrupted that day, although it would be years later before I accepted what I had done. I forgot who I was and what I should do and only thought about what I wanted and what I could do.

Tawni O'Dell

#32. The only people who come close to annoying me as much as left-laners are cart-hogs, shoppers who leave their carts in the middle of the aisle and wander a few feet away, where they stand with their mouths open staring stupefied at the shelves as if they've never seen food before. I

Tawni O'Dell

#33. I've never had any desire to be loved. I prefer being feared. It gets the same results but without any hugging.

Tawni O'Dell

#34. Most people who stay do it because they're afraid to leave, and most people who leave do it because they're afraid to stay. If you stop and think about it you'll find that fear is the motivating factor for most decisions people make in their lives

Tawni O'Dell

#35. He doesn't comment on any of the music I play: Sonny Rollins followed by AC/DC followed by the Broadway score from My Fair Lady.

Tawni O'Dell

#36. I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.

Tawni O'Dell

#37. I was an avid tomboy, and as long as I could ride my bike just as fast, hit the ball just as hard, and catch just as many garter snakes, I was accepted as one of the boys and enjoyed all the perks of superiority.

Tawni O'Dell

#38. Capitalism is based on the concept that in order for someone to succeed, someone else has to suffer.

Tawni O'Dell

#39. I'm a novelist, and I'm a woman, and I'm considered to be a serious author whether I like it or not.

Tawni O'Dell

#40. When I begin writing, I have no idea what my novels are ultimately going to be about. I don't have a plot. I never consider a theme. I don't make notes or outlines.

Tawni O'Dell

#41. Why would she want to come back here and live?' I wondered. 'Doesn't seem like she'd want to.'
'Why do you say that?'
'She seems different, that's all.'
'I don't know,' Bud said. 'You might be confusing different with dissatisfied.

Tawni O'Dell