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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 Knowing Knows Stories Attention Help Human Hurt Kindness Might Poverty

Famous Leslie Jamison Quotes

“You thought the story kept changing, but the most important part never did. She was always just a woman in pain, sitting right in front of you. Sometimes it hurts just to stand. Sometimes a person needs help because she needs it, not because her story is compelling or noble or strange enough to earn it, and sometimes you just do what you can.”

Pain Kindness Empathy Human Help

Book:Make It Scream, Make It Burn

Source: Make It Scream, Make It Burn

“This was the double blade of how I felt about anything that hurt: I wanted someone else to feel it with me, and also I wanted it entirely for myself.”

Pain Compassion Empathy

Book:The Empathy Exams

Source: The Empathy Exams

“Pain without cause is a pain we can't trust. We assume it's been chosen or fabricated.”

Pain Suffering Empathy

Book:The Empathy Exams

Source: The Empathy Exams

“Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia - em (into) and pathos (feeling) - a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person's pain as you'd enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?”

Pain Travel Empathy

Book:The Empathy Exams

Source: The Empathy Exams

“Imagining someone else's pain with too much surety can be as damaging as failing to imagine it.”

Pain Too Much Imagine Failing

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

“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.”

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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