Leslie Jamison Quotes

I would like my novels to be read the way I read the novels I love.

My books are written from the heart, to entertain: they're books I would like to read. Because of that, when I meet people who like them, we have so much to talk about!

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

Before the day my grandmother shared her treasured letters with me, I honestly wasn't much of a fiction reader, let alone creative writer.

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them.

I always have a book that I use that somehow inspires my novels.

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books.

My theory is that sometimes writers write books because they want to read them, and they aren't there to be read. And I think that was true of me.

Acting is about enhancing your life, not representing something that's missing.

I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.

I get suggestions all the time. People feel quite free at events or even on the street to tell me what they think I should be writing. What I've learned, though, is that this thing, this connection, has to be in place for me to be able to kind of launch into a world imaginatively.

Songs of different moods are like keys, which help me enter the world of my book's characters.

My most successful books, the ones that I feel the strongest about, are the ones that started with a premise that for me was deeply emotional.

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.

Many people have told me that my books read like novels. Perhaps this is because, when I write, I feel I am really there, so strong is my feeling for my subject. On occasion, I have been so moved by the events I have been describing that I have felt like crying.

Tell the story that's in your heart, and don't hold back. Write a book the reader will want to melt into.

Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.

Every artist wants an audience, and it's incredible to me how books take on a life of their own and reach people whom you could never meet. That's what got me interested in writing in the first place.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

I like making things. I enjoy putting words and images on a blank space. There should be joy in the writing itself because parts of it are so challenging and lonesome. I take great pleasure in reading, researching, and interviewing. I enjoy forming my sentences and revising them to make them clean.

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.