Leslie Jamison Quotes
-
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.
-
I really believe in people putting stories out there that contain the most difficult moments because nothing to me is more lonely making than sanitized stories or airbrushed stories that kind of allied how hard it got.
-
It's not just that everyone has a story. It's that everyone has a thousand stories. Everyone is infinite.
-
I don't make films, and because I don't make films, I'm not an expert in the craft of bringing a film into the world, how you put its various pieces together. But where I feel like I'm an expert is my own feelings in response to a film.
-
Whenever we feel shame, it's a mark of some deep investment or deep internal struggle.
-
The idea that a story has to be 'exceptional' in order to be worth telling is curious to me. What if we looked at every single person's story as a site of possibly infinite meaning? What if we came to believe that there isn't hubris or narcissism in thinking your story might be worth sharing - only a sense of curiosity and offering?
-
The story of getting better can be just as compelling as the story of falling apart.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Probably every person is some mixture of wanting to feel a sense of commonality and shared experience with others but also wanting to feel completely singular and unique.
-
'Tough' is one of the last adjectives I would use to describe myself.