Words matter. These are the best Tawni O’Dell Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m a novelist, and I’m a woman, and I’m considered to be a serious author whether I like it or not.
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.
It turned out I really didn’t like journalism. I wanted to make up stories, not cover real events.
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.
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.
When you live in a community where people know you, it makes you want to be good and decent. It’s a strong influence.
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.
The image I had was that Oprah books were fluffy.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Here I am, this smart, bookish girl, and I have this biker-chick name.
