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Leigh Newman Books

Writer

Leigh Newman is an American writer born on May 15, 1971. Her works are known for their deep psychological insights and portrayals of women's lives.

Still Points North: One Alaskan Childho...

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Feels Feelings Pain Energy Half Hell Minutes Avoiding Resisting Avoiding Pain

Author:Leigh Newman

“There are still things out there in the universe to contemplate and spend our lives chasing.”

Stills Universe Our Lives Contemplating Chasing

Author:Leigh Newman

“How do you stop longing for what you absolutely know you can't get? Which really means: How do you absolutely know you can't-and won't-get it, not ever? How do you pinch out that wisp of feeble, ruthless hope?”

Knows Mean Longing Ruthless Really Mean Wisps

Book:Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One Grown-up World, One Long Journey Home

Source: Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One Grown-up World, One Long Journey Home

“Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience. . . . Moving. . . . compassionate.”

“When you're looking around for metaphor or simile, I do think it's often helpful to keep inside the world of the book, to gather your comparisons from the stuff particular to that world - be they king salmon and aviation fuel, or pot roasts and spatulas.”

Thinking World Book Stuff Particular Kings Metaphor Fuel Aviation Comparison Helpful Pot Simile Salmon Spatulas

Author:Leigh Newman

“It feels like people talk a lot, in their relationships and in therapy. But my family wasn't like that. My dad wasn't and I wasn't. Things were said, but via the language of action.”

People Feels Said Action Language Dad My Family My Dad Therapy

Author:Leigh Newman

“I wasn't in a position that some other memoirists are, dealing with families who fed them meth, or kidnapped them, or did something that would make the writer not want to see that family again. I wanted to see my family. I wanted to celebrate them. I was proud of who we were, in the wilderness, floating down rapids or hiking over glaciers, and everywhere else.”

Want Wanted Position Proud My Family Celebrate Wilderness Feds Hiking Floating Rapids Glaciers Kidnapped

Author:Leigh Newman

“I made myself a rule: write out of love. And when you love somebody, you have to tell the truth about who they are - not the cute "truth" in your head of who they are, the one where you did everything right and they did everything wrong.”

Writing Made Cute Telling The Truth

Author:Leigh Newman

“It's much harder when you're writing about your life, than when you're writing fiction.”

Writing Fiction Harder Writing Fiction

Author:Leigh Newman

“My natural inclination is to think in scenes. So that's how I write, and the issue for me is usually: what to compress for speed.”

Thinking Writing Natural Issues Scene Speed Inclination

Author:Leigh Newman

“Maybe it's easier to think about dishonesty and what kind of trouble you can get into as a writer when love and honesty collide and you sidestep that collision, either because you want to protect somebody or you want to blame somebody - which are the usual impulses in love: protection and blame, frequently at the same time - so you don't exactly tell the truth.”

Thinking Want Kind Trouble Honesty Easier Protect Blame Protection Impulse Telling The Truth Usual Dishonesty Collision Collide Love And Honesty

Author:Leigh Newman

“I would hit a scene about my mother screaming at me during her breakdown, drunk or using pills, and she'd turn into a monster. Which she wasn't. She was a human: somebody who loved me and somebody with a problem.”

Humans Problem Mother Turns Scene Monsters Drunk Pills Breakdown

Author:Leigh Newman

“There's a kind of intimacy that happens between a mother and an only child. Which only gets more intimate when it's between a mother and only daughter.”

Kind Children Happens Mother Daughter Intimacy Intimate Only Child Only Daughter

Author:Leigh Newman

“When I was growing up, there were no cell phones and no roads into the bush, and so if something happened to your plane, that was serious. Nobody was coming to rescue you.”

Ifs Growing Up Growing Happened Serious Phones Cells Planes Rescue Cell Phone

Author:Leigh Newman

“You see things really different when your father is so intimately, so indisputably in charge of your continued existence on the planet.”

Different Father Existence Planets

Author:Leigh Newman

“Most kids who grow up in Alaska and spend a fair degree of time in the wilderness, grow up being pretty self-reliant. You have to be, in order to survive all the animals and cliffs and crevasses and rapids - at some point, your brain has to kick [out of] that childish daydream world and start making I-want-to-live decisions.”

World Want Self Kids Order Grows Decision Animal Brain Growing Up Degrees Fairs Kicks Wilderness Rapids Cliffs Daydreaming Alaska Self Reliant Being Pretty

Author:Leigh Newman

“My dad felt pretty strongly that I know about the basic workings of a plane and so he taught me how to read and set the instruments, as well as the basics of taking off and landing.”

Knows Wells Felt Taught Dad Instruments My Dad Planes Landing Basics

Author:Leigh Newman

“It was a life with purpose. And it was also a lot of fun. Fishing is fun. Hiking up mountains is fun. Building a wall out of river rocks dug up from the bottom of a glacial lake is not fun. Not at all. But it does give a work ethic that you can take anywhere in the world.”

World Giving Doe Purpose Fun Rocks Building Wall Mountain Ethics Rivers Bottom Lakes Fishing Purpose Of Life Hiking Work Ethic

Author:Leigh Newman

“If you need somebody to dig up rocks eight hours a day underwater, call me.”

Ifs Needs Hours Rocks Eight Call Me Underwater

Author:Leigh Newman

“After the age of seven, I began living between my dad in Alaska and my mother in Baltimore. Every three or four months, I would fly the 5,000 miles between the two. And having grown up in Alaska, Baltimore was astonishing.”

Two Age Mother Three Four Months Dad Seven My Dad Miles Astonishing Alaska Baltimore

Author:Leigh Newman

“The minute I landed back in Alaska, it was back to hip boots and fish guts. This cultural flipping wasn't easy - especially on top of the post-divorce fighting that was still going on between my parents. But this is why you don't write a memoir at age fourteen.”

Writing Stills Age Fighting Easy Parent Minutes Fishes Divorce Memoir Hips Posts Guts Boots Alaska Fourteen

Author:Leigh Newman

“The reason I could fit in with so many different kinds of people was that I had no self. And then the problem is, if you don't have a self, how can you be with other people? Who the hell are you with them?”

People Ifs Kind Different Self Reason Problem Hell Fit Different Kinds

Author:Leigh Newman

“I turned what was a wonderful case of self-reliance into a case of self-exile. Which is not uncommon, I think, in people who grow really early and have to learn how to take care of themselves. They have trouble hinging their lives with anybody else.”

People Thinking Self Care Grows Cases Wonderful Trouble Take Care Self Reliance Exile Reliance Uncommon

Author:Leigh Newman

“I'm pretty much of the Shakespearean school. Dialogue is character. How we speak is who we are.”

Character School Speak Dialogue Who We Are

Author:Leigh Newman

“My mom was a social worker. I had a pretty good idea of what the authorities can do when a parent's not around.”

Ideas Social Parent Can Do Mom Authority Workers My Mom Good Ideas Social Worker

Author:Leigh Newman

“I was an only child. And it's very much my temperament. I remember playing with a piece of string in my room for hours. I had never thought about what it would be like to have siblings.”

Children Would Be Remember Hours Rooms Pieces Strings Temperament Sibling Only Child

Author:Leigh Newman

“I don't think many kids question their surroundings. Everything seems so permanent and inevitable growing up, even chaos.”

Thinking Seems Kids Growing Up Growing Chaos Inevitable Permanent Surroundings

Author:Leigh Newman

“After my parents divorced, my father remarried and my brothers were born when I was twelve and sixteen. I was thunderstruck at these kids. The "baby-ness" of them. Their toes. I had never been around babies before.”

Kids Father Parent Born Brother Baby My Brother Twelve Toes Divorced Sixteen

Author:Leigh Newman

“Often, I think that my brothers were the reason I didn't do something really stupid in my teenage years; I didn't want to disappoint them. Even though was I was pretty committed to disappointing everybody else.”

Thinking Want Years Reason Stupid Brother Committed My Brother Teenage Disappoint Disappointing Teenage Years Really Stupid

Author:Leigh Newman

“Even as my family fell apart and things were at their most hopeless, my dad and I found a lot of happiness in the wilderness - sleeping on the cold gravel and killing as many things as we could get our hands on. Even as my mom got progressively more crazy, we found a happiness, in flashes.”

Hands Found Sleep Crazy Mom Cold Dad My Family Killing My Dad My Mom Wilderness Hopeless Flash Gravel

Author:Leigh Newman

“There was always some germ of joy, some little paramecium of happiness wriggling around, waiting for a chance to get out.”

Littles Joy Waiting Chance Germs

Author:Leigh Newman

“The tough thing is how to cultivate a life where the paramecium of happiness gets a lot of chances to get out and swim and make more paramecia. That seems like an obvious universal goal for most humans.”

Humans Seems Goal Chance Tough Universal Obvious Swim Tough Things

Author:Leigh Newman

“I've managed to create intimacy with people I know, and people that I don't know. The longer things stay inside of us, the more we think they are black or tainted, but they're really not.”

People Thinking Black Intimacy

Author:Leigh Newman

“I didn't write the memoir with any sort of intention of feeling better. I wrote the memoir because I had a weird need to write a good story. But once I was done, I did feel better about myself. Not better, just calmer. Because a tremendous onus had been lifted off my day-to-day.”

Writing Done Feelings Intention Memoir Feel Better

Author:Leigh Newman

“If you want to write in a mature and interesting way, you have to have sympathy for everyone that's involved.”

Writing Interesting Mature

Author:Leigh Newman

“The most reliable path to glory is base brute effort.”

Effort Path Glory Brutes

Author:Leigh Newman

“Most dreams are also part reality (otherwise we wouldn’t believe them), and reality happens to be a condition that gives you plenty of chances through your life to rise to - no, soar through - the occasion.”

Giving Believe Dream Reality Happens Chance Conditions Plenty Occasions Soar

Author:Leigh Newman

“While you can't keep your heart from getting broken, you can stop breaking your own heart...once you realize the difference between what you can control and what you can't, and that it's far, far more fun to lavish all that attention on your own self-worth.”

Heart Self Fun Realizing Differences Attention Broken Self Worth

Author:Leigh Newman

About the Author

Born: May 15, 1971
Known for: Writer
Quotes: 38

Books & Sources

Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One Grown-up World, One Long Journey HomeRelated source material

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Leigh Newman Books

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