Leslie Jamison quoting John Irving about the usefulness of sentimentality.

"In a 1979 op-ed called “In Defense of Sentimentality,” John Irving examines the legacy of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, stressing the importance of what he calls “Christmas risks”: earnest attempts to articulate pathos without cloaking it in cleverness or wit."

                                                                                           
                                                                 - Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams