“Writing is so wrapped up in ego, but with math one is just trying to g...” — Bonnie Jo Campbell Quote

“Writing is so wrapped up in ego, but with math one is just trying to get it right, although you're often wrong. I think math helped me become a good critic of myself, come at writing a little less personally.”

“I've worked behind counters serving food, and I've lived on the circus train, and I've led bicycle tours in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and Russia. I've been a key liner for a newspaper, I've done typesetting. Oh, all sorts of things.”

“A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.”

“After you do a joke a few times, you have material that you know works. Although sometimes I have a joke that has worked a bunch of times, and then one night it'll flop.”

“And you realise you're doing a public service in making people happy - as a musician you can give people something a doctor, a lawyer, a politician cannot give them that. It's not scientific. It's spiritual - a good feeling. And although you don't know them personally, the audience are like your friends.”

“The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences.”