Alive Quote by Leslie Jamison

When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say 'all kinds,' but really I mean I don’t write any kind at all:…

— 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…

— Leslie Jamison

The pain is what you make of it. You have to find something in it that yields. I understood my guiding imperative as: keep…

— Leslie Jamison

I needed people to deliver my feelings back to me in a form that was legible. Which is a superlative kind of empathy to…

— Leslie Jamison

In my own life as a reader I experience real moments of alienation when a writer feels too perfect, or like even the flaws…

— Leslie Jamison

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…

— Leslie Jamison

I do like arranging things. I like order. I basically like all these things that are the opposite of what people associate with the…

— Leslie Jamison

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

— Leslie Jamison

“I obsessed, and told myself this obsession was empathy. But it wasn't, quite. It was more like inpathy. I wasn't expatriating myself into another…

— Leslie Jamison

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…

— Leslie Jamison

12-step recovery is very focused on abstinence, and that's bled into the broader understanding of treatment. It would be most useful to have multiple…

— Leslie Jamison

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…

— Leslie Jamison