Leslie Jamison

I completely identify with finding freedom in boundaries. That's why I tend to have more freedom when I write nonfiction over fiction: because I'm running up against actuality and beholden to the truth in a different way.

Redeeming subjects from cliche is its own pleasure and privilege.

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.

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.

I had never really thought of myself as a baby person, but it's just a really profound connection.

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.

It's kind of funny that I've been branded as the empathy lady when, really, what I'm doing is questioning and interrogating empathy.

If you operate under the premise that everybody already has some experiences that could be sources of empathy for them, I wonder if there's some process of coaxing people into tapping into that knowledge.

My dad is an economist who does global development research. What he practices is a kind of quantifiable empathy: trying to empathize with systems rather than people.

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.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to figure out what to say at the dinner table.

I do like arranging things. I like order. I basically like all these things that are the opposite of what people associate with the wild, passionate creative temperament.