Tawni O'Dell Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Nothing shatters the reality of our good intentions like reality. — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

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

You and I have never shared a bank account or a child or a bed. But you are my wife. — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

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

Here I am, this smart, bookish girl, and I have this biker-chick name. — Tawni O'Dell

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

The image I had was that Oprah books were fluffy. — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

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

Now it's a loud, slick sports bar like a thousand others across the nation. For some reason, they kept the name and also attempted to keep some of the original spirit by covering the walls with a pasteurized mishmash of blue-collar manliness: sports memorabilia, brand-new parts of old-model cars, a length of shiny railroad track, a mounted deer head. Now just as many women come here as men. The place reverberates with the sound of raised voices trying to compete with the noise coming from the twenty TVs. On weekends they compound the problem by having live music. — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

It turned out I really didn't like journalism. I wanted to make up stories, not cover real events. — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

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

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

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

What do you need that for?" he asks about the Jack Daniel's. "We might have to hit her over the head." "Why are you smiling?" "Because this is a happy time," I tell him honestly, even after I push aside the image of knocking Shannon unconscious with a bottle of JD. "This is fun. This is good. When this is all over, we're going to have a baby." He doesn't look all that convinced, but he trots after me as we take our equipment into Shannon's room. She's sitting propped up on the bed with every pillow in my house behind her, blowing out air like a stalled locomotive. "You're going to ruin my pillows," I moan. "I'll buy you new pillows," she spits at me. "I'll buy you a new bed. I'll buy you a new fucking house." "Watch your language," I tell her. "There's a little kid here." "You think I care about a fucking little kid? Why is there a little kid here?" "Can we hit her yet?" Kenny asks. "Not yet." Fanci — Tawni O'Dell

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

What are you looking at?" she screams at me. "I told you I was going to have the baby today." "I thought you were joking. No one knows exactly when they're going to have a baby." "I do." "Then why didn't you make plans?" "These are my plans." "To have it here?" "You were a cop. You know how to deliver babies." "I also know how to do body cavity searches. It doesn't mean I want to do them." She — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

She's wearing the dreamy expression peculiar to the very old and the very young, where they seem fascinated by something everyone else takes for granted. People find the phenomenon adorable in babies. It means they're inquisitive and intrigued by objects in their new world. In old people they usually chalk it up to senility, but I don't think that's the case. For both, it's the ability to see things in their purest sense. All the knowledge that comes from experience doesn't exist for a child and doesn't matter anymore to an old lady. With a life completely in front of you or a life completely behind you, the world looks basically the same. She — Tawni O'Dell

I really, really missed the Pennsylvania countryside and hills. — Tawni O'Dell

I wanted to end it now, like a bad TV show turned off in the middle. — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

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

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

I learned the most important aspect of a mother's love was not the intensity but its reliable consistency. — Tawni O'Dell

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

I'm a novelist - not an expert on coal mining. I'm not a politician with an agenda to push. I'm not a reporter presenting facts, and I'm not a sociologist documenting the last struggling remnants of blue-collar America. I'm simply an author who sets her books in coal country because it's where I come from, and it's what I know. — Tawni O'Dell

She's sitting propped up on the — Tawni O'Dell

I've decided that the worst part of loneliness isn't being alone. It's being forgotten. — Tawni O'Dell

Capitalism is based on the concept that in order for someone to succeed, someone else has to suffer. — Tawni O'Dell

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

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

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