Rossetter Leavitt Quotes

clinical literature is virtually unanimous that full MPD [Multiple Personality Disorder] cannot be created iatrogenically. There is no evidence that such a case has been demonstrated; clinicians of widely different orientations have studied the available information and arrived at similar conclusions (e.g., Braun, 1984; Gruenewald, 1984; Kernberg, in press; Kluft, 1982; Putnam, 1989). Nonetheless, most of these observers have noted that many of the phenomena of MPD can be created quite readily, and that phenomena with striking superficial resemblance to MPD can be generated with relatively little effort. In fact, I noted in passing (Kluft, 1986a) that I had replicated the interventions of Harriman (1942,1943), Leavitt (1947), and Kampman (1976), and found the resultant phenomena clearly distinguishable from clinical MPD.
(from Kluft, R. P. (1989). Dissociation: Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 083-091: Iatrongenic creation of new alter personalities) ~ Richard P. Kluft

We're all messed up," I said. "I think life is just about finding the right people to be messed up with. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Leavitt appeared, looming over him, a syringe in his hand. "I thought we'd come to an understanding, son. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do this." He knelt down and stuck the needle in Thomas's neck, compressed the syringe with his thumb. Before he passed out, Thomas looked at Teresa again, their eyes meeting for just a few precious seconds. The world had already started to blur when they dragged her away, but he clearly heard what she called out to him. "Someday we'll be bigger." - ~ James Dashner

By the time I was 5, I was already an outcast. It was the early 1960s, and I was part of the only Jewish family in a decidedly Christian suburb of Waltham, Mass. ~ Caroline Leavitt

It is life that hurts you not death. ~ Martine Leavitt

I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do. ~ Caroline Leavitt

A true friend gives you exactly what you need, even if she has no idea why you need it. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Because I like being around you." He's still looking out the window, and I wonder if he's focusing on one object when he says this and what that object is. "I probably shouldn't, but I do. And I can't say why. I mean, I can think of a bunch of reasons why."
Like? Like?
"But given … the obvious roadblock, I'm not sure how much we can get to know each other." He rushes on. "As people, because you're an interesting person and I value that in friendship. That's seriously what I'm after, not that I'm after you and I'm not talking about, you know, 'knowing' each other. Like in a biblical way or anything, although you're obviously pretty. I mean, very pretty and totally worth knowing both ways … Okay, shut it, Oliver. Shut it. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me. ~ Caroline Leavitt

People love stories. They need stories. ~ Caroline Leavitt

We stood in the wings together, side by side. Reed's mouth was still agape.
"It makes sense when you think about it," I mused. "You get two people together who have you-know-what, and sparks are going to fly."
Reed's cue was about to start. He pointed at me and said, "Tonight. There's a party. And we're going to talk."
"Yes"
"Because this is crazy."
"Totally."
"Okay. Well." He tugged a strand of my hair. "Good luck out there."
"You're not supposed to say that."
"Fine. How about..." He squinted at me. "Here's looking at you kid."
The smile melted off my face. "What did you say?"
"It's a line. From a movie." He shrugged and burst onto the stage with a hee-haw.
It was a line. From Casablanca. The same line KARL had said to me when I was Elsa. The same like Karl didn't recognize when I said it to him as Floressa. Which meant... nothing. Right? Lots of people know that line. Just because Reed said it, and Reed was a sub, it didn't mean he was... he was...
"You're on," the stage manager whispered.
I stumbled onto the stage. The lights were too bright. The theater was packed. Reed gave me a quick, crooked smile, and I knew.
My crush on Karl was less complicated than I thought, because it wasn't Karl I'd been with that day in the garden.
Now my crush on Reed... ?
THAT was a scandal all on its own. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

I've figured out there's a difference between the meaning of the word 'real' and the meaning of the word 'true. ~ Martine Leavitt

When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow do not our fingers and toes whisper death And when winter is at last over ... can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us In the dark don't we know And when we are paralyzed by nightmares We know what you are. With our first cries we rail against you. We see you in every drop of blood in every tear. ~ Martine Leavitt

To start with, at that time I'd gone to bed with probably three dozen boys, all of them either German or English; never with a woman. Nonetheless -- and incredible thought it may seem -- I still assumed that a day would come when I would fall in love with some lovely, intelligent girl, whom I would marry and who would bear me children. And what of my attraction to men? To tell the truth, I didn't worry much about it. I pretended my homosexuality was a function of my youth, that when I "grew up" it would fall away, like baby teeth, to be replaced by something more mature and permanent. I, after all, was no pansy; the boy in Croydon who hanged himself after his father caught him in makeup and garters, he was a pansy, as was Oscar Wilde, my first-form Latin tutor, Channing's friend Peter Lovesey's brother. Pansies farted differently, and went to pubs where the barstools didn't have seats, and had very little in common with my crowd, by which I meant Higel and Horst and our other homosexual friends, all of whom were aggressively, unreservedly masculine, reveled in all things male, and held no truck with sissies and fairies, the overrefined Rupert Halliwells of the world. To the untrained eye nothing distinguished us from "normal" men.

Though I must confess that by 1936 the majority of my friends had stopped deluding themselves into believing their homosexuality was merely a phase. They claimed, rather, to have sworn off women, by choice. For them, homosexuality was an ~ David Leavitt

Susie: Okay, Calvin. But you know what? You can't say, youcan'texpectanythingfrommeI'mbroken! And turn around the next minute and say, ohwoeismeeverybodytreatsmelikeI'mbroken! Which one is it? I can treat you the way I really feel, or I can treat you careful.
Me: Real. Just be real. ~ Martine Leavitt

Which is worse, she thinks, waiting for the sting, or the sting itself? ~ Caroline Leavitt

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves. ~ Caroline Leavitt

The last thing I wanted when things were just barely started with Dax was having my friends make aware. What if they told my family? What was there even to tell so far? We'd kissed twice. We'd exchanged a few texts. I thought about him constantly. I'd named our first three children.
So what? ~ Lindsey Leavitt

I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Hope had stolen into his life just as he was growing comfortable with despair. ~ David Leavitt

He's going to want an explanation," I say.
"An explanation? You don't owe him anything. If you don't want to talk to him, don't. If you want to yell at him, do. If you want to slash his tires - "
"Ginnie."
"I was going to say don't. Or do. Whatever helps. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised. ~ David Leavitt

A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth. ~ Caroline Leavitt

My lord, why do you trouble me by walking with me in the dark? It is cruel."
"I think to protect you from them," he said. ~ Martine Leavitt

I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Susie: Doesn't it make you feel kind of awesome that the world is beautiful for no other apparent reason than that it is? Like beauty has its own secret reason. It doesn't need human eyes to notice. It just wants to be glorious and unbelievable. ~ Martine Leavitt

There's nothing sweeter than sweat. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year. ~ Caroline Leavitt

How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm ... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting ... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow ... [M]y heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn't the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn't I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning? ~ Martine Leavitt

Do what you love. Live fearlessly and take risks. Don't take no for an answer from anyone - go ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. Believe that anything can be possible. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy! ~ Caroline Leavitt

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving. ~ Caroline Leavitt

When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself. ~ David Leavitt

Assume makes an ass out of you and me - p.239 ~ David Leavitt

The Term Paper Artist' represents two models of writing, one of the little boy bouncing his ball, generating stories for the sheer pleasure of it, and the besieged adult, writing to make a living, having to contend with a very competitive, very unreliable world in which public image counts. ~ David Leavitt

Why doesn't he get over it already? But that was the secret, wasn't it? You never got over what you lost. You always carried it with you, stitched to you like Peter Pan's shadow. And you never wanted to get over it, because who wanted to forget a time that had been so important? No, the truth was, you wanted to remember it always. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Life if freer once you are out of the cocoon. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

The dead can't change, but you can. ~ Caroline Leavitt

These are the best reasons to do anything in life. People who say things like this are the kind of people who change the world. Who prevent the world from ending. Or at least they can change the inner world of a reader and that is a sacred power. ~ Martine Leavitt

People don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul - satisfying emotion than a dozen facts. ~ Robert Keith Leavitt

Everything they've said is tainted now. Every day was a lie. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

I thought Oliver was trying hard before, but now I realize it's quite the opposite
he doesn't try, he just is, makes up his mind and doesn't check if it's going to work for his image or come off wrong. Since the rest of us are being so self-aware, his presence seems calculated. No one can possibly be that breezy, saying what he thinks, feeling what he feels. I can see why people don't like him for this very reason
it's so much easier to call him a poser.
Because if he's the real deal, then that makes the rest of us fakes. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Death is the ending of all true stories. ~ Martine Leavitt

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I think the Internet has made things a lot easier. Twitter and Facebook let you really connect to your readers effortlessly! ~ Caroline Leavitt

He once wore the same T-shirt to school for forty-two days straight. Everyone speculated the reasoning behind the bright orange STAFF shirt - he was protesting unemployment, flipping off commercialization, going green. I think he just did it because he could. To say, Hey, I'm Oliver Kimball, and when I wear a shirt every day, it's a statement, but with anyone else, it's a hygiene issue. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door. ~ Caroline Leavitt