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Leslie Jamison Quotes

Novelist

Leslie Jamison is an American novelist born in 1983. Her works are known for their deep self-reflection and delicate portrayal of human emotions. Jamison's writing often explores themes of personal identity, memory, and truth.

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All Empathy Pain Ifs Feels Love People Thinking Way Writing Kind

Famous Leslie Jamison Quotes

“Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.”

Knows Knowing Empathy

Author:Leslie Jamison

“Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.”

Knows Needs Mean Imagination Answers Knowing Listening Empathy Asking Horizon Inquiry Just Listen Of Context

Book:The Empathy Exams: Essays

Source: The Empathy Exams: Essays

“No trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries.”

Life Edges Trauma Wounds Boundaries Discrete

Book:The Empathy Exams: Essays

Source: The Empathy Exams: Essays

“I loved the full heat of being drunk, like I was made of melting chocolate and spreading in all directions.”

Made Drunk Heat Chocolate Melting Being Drunk

Book:The Gin Closet

Source: The Gin Closet

“When bad things happened to other people, I imagined them happening to me. I didn’t know if this was empathy or theft.”

People Ifs Knows Happened Empathy Happenings Things Happen Bad Things Theft Bad Things Happen

Book:The Empathy Exams: Essays

Source: The Empathy Exams: Essays

“Whatever we can’t hold, we hang on a hook that will hold it.”

Hook

Book:The Empathy Exams: Essays

Source: The Empathy Exams: Essays

“The pain is what you make of it. You have to find something in it that yields. I understood my guiding imperative as: keep bleeding, but find some love in the blood.”

Pain Blood Understood Yield Imperatives Bleeding

Book:The Empathy Exams: Essays

Source: The Empathy Exams: Essays

“Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us — a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain — it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves.”

Happens Choices Pay Attention Brain Empathy Pay Attention Showers Firing Meteors Synapses

Book:The Empathy Exams: Essays

Source: The Empathy Exams: Essays

“Post-wounded women know that postures of pain play into limited and outmoded conceptions of womanhood. Their hurt has a new native language spoken in several dialects: sarcastic, jaded, opaque; cool and clever. They guard against those moments when melodrama or self-pity might split their careful seams of intellect, expose the shame of self-absorption without self-awareness.”

“After finishing a draft, no matter how rough, I almost always put it aside for a while. It doesn't matter if it's a story or a novel, I find that when it's still fresh in my mind I'm either thoroughly sick of its flaws or completely blind to them. Either way, I'm unable to make substantive edits of any value.”

Ifs Way Mind Stills Matter Stories Values Novel Sick Blind Flaws Rough Finishing Edits

Author:Leslie Jamison

“Armchair poverty tourism has been around as long as authors have written about class. As an author, I have struggled myself with the nuances of writing about poverty without reducing any community to a catalog of its difficulties.”

Writing Long Has Beens Community Class Poverty Written Difficulty Reducing Tourism Nuance Armchairs

Author:Leslie Jamison

“I've been lucky enough to work with extraordinary teachers along the way, and I'm excited to share what I've learned with graduate students at SNHU. I'm just as excited for what I'll learn from them.”

Way Enough Teacher Share Students Lucky Extraordinary Excited I've Learned Graduates Graduate Students

Author:Leslie Jamison

“It's one of the most liberating things I experience in writing - letting yourself get rid of a gesture or character or plot point that always nagged, even if you couldn't admit to yourself that it did.”

Ifs Writing Character Plot Gestures Liberating

Author:Leslie Jamison

“The global phenomenon of poverty tourism - or 'poorism' - has become increasingly popular during the past few years. Tourists pay to be guided through the favelas of Brazil and the shantytowns of South Africa. The recently opened Los Angeles Gang Tour carries visitors through battle-scarred territories of urban violence and deprivation.”

Years Past Pay Poverty Violence Battle South Carrie Los Angeles Phenomenon Territory South Africa Urban Gang Tourists Tourism Visitors Brazil Deprivation Gang Violence Favelas

Author:Leslie Jamison

“The publishing industry, unsurprisingly, is full of different people who love different things and express that love in different languages. Find the people, the editors and agents, with whom you share some language, and some sense of what makes literature worth reading.”

People Different Reading Literature Language Share Industry Agents Different Things Editors Publishing Different Peoples Worth Reading Different Languages Publishing Industry

Author:Leslie Jamison

“Though there might not be any easy answers to the problem of poverty, its most compelling scribes do not resign themselves to representation solely for the sake of those age-old verities of truth and beauty.”

Problem Might Age Easy Answers Poverty Sake Compelling Representation Truth And Beauty Easy Answers Scribes

Author:Leslie Jamison

“Whenever I've been stuck on a project, it's always brought me solace to the return to books that moved me in the past. It's a nice way to get outside my own head; and it brings me back to one of the most important reasons I write at all: to bring some pleasure to readers, to make them think or feel.”

Thinking Way Feels Writing Important Book Reason Past My Own Pleasure Nice Return Reader Projects Moved Stuck Solace

Author:Leslie Jamison

“You pass the old L.A. County jail, which is surprisingly beautiful. It's got a handsome stone facade and stately columns. The new L.A. County jail - called The Twin Towers - isn't beautiful at all; it's a stucco panopticon the color of sick flesh.”

Beautiful Color Stones Sick Flesh Jail Twins Towers Handsome Columns County Facade Twin Towers

Book:The Empathy Exams: Essays

Source: The Empathy Exams: Essays

About the Author

Born: 1983
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 68

Books & Sources

The Empathy ExamsRelated source material

Make It Scream, Make It BurnRelated source material

The Empathy Exams: EssaysRelated source material

The Gin ClosetRelated source material

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