42 Quotes by Tawni O'Dell

The image I had was that Oprah books were fluffy.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.