Leslie Jamison Quotes

21 quotes in 497 categories

• I'm happy not knowing. Most of the time (except when I'm a neurotic mess about uncertainty) I feel glad that the horizon is a mystery.
• We don't want to be wounds ("No, you're the wound!") but we should be allowed to have them, to speak about having them, to be…
• Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.
• 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…
• No trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries.
• I loved the full heat of being drunk, like I was made of melting chocolate and spreading in all directions.
• When bad things happened to other people, I imagined them happening to me. I didn’t know if this was empathy or theft.
• Whatever we can’t hold, we hang on a hook that will hold it.
• 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,…
• 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:…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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.…
• 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…
• The global phenomenon of poverty tourism - or 'poorism' - has become increasingly popular during the past few years. Tourists pay to be guided through…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…

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