Quotes About Empathy

An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.

But why bother about the end of the world? It's the end of the world every day, for someone. Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.

All of this was understood, and if not condoned, at least pardoned.

Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don't really care about them all that much?

How can I teach her some way of being human that won't destroy her?

Stretch your hand towards those gentle eyes that regard you with such trust

She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.

The trouble some people have being German, I thought, I have being human. In a way it was stupid to be more disturbed by a dead bird than by those other things, the wars and riots and the massacres in the newspapers. But for the wars and riots there was always an explanation, people wrote books about them saying why they happened: the death of the heron was causeless, undiluted.

Only a girl like this can know what's happened to you. If she were here she would reach out her arms towards you now, and touch you with her absent hands and you would feel nothing, but you would be touched all the same.

He needs to be listened to, he needs to be heard. He needs at least the illusion of being understood.

he doesn't know it, but this touching she does is not only compassionate, but possessive.

But if you happen to be a man, sometime in the future, and you've made it this far, please remember: you will never be subjected to the temptation of feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman.

You all right? he said again. I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didn't belong here. But he existed, he deserved to be alive. I was wishing I could tell him how to change so he could get there, the place where I was. Yes, I said. I touched him on the arm with my hand. My hand touched his arm. Hand touched arm. Language divides us into fragments, I wanted to be whole.

But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

They meet in church basements and offer bandages to those wounded by the shrapnel of exploding families.

Being upset is a warmer, close-up feeling, not a chilly distant feeling like laughing at people.

She was a more charitable person than I was; I admired her in that, but I could not emulate her.

But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.

He was wrong about the sadness though: far better to have it when you're young. A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone.

But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe

He feels the need to hear a human voice—a fully human voice like his own. Sometimes he laughs like a hyena or roars like a lion—his idea of a hyena his idea of a lion.

It was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself; if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space. Everyone knew that. Falling

But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this.

A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone.