Quotes About Empathy

What do I want? I want you to talk about normal things. No I don't. I want you to look me in the eye and say, I know you're dying.

I opened myself to your silences.

I still have it in me to feel sorry for him. Moira is right, I am a wimp.

But remember that forgiveness too is a power.

You should always try to imagine what they must be feeling. Of course they will resent you. It is only natural. Try to feel for them. Aunt Lydia thought she was very good at feeling for other people. Try to pity them. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

He was not a monster, to her ... How easy to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.

It was as if they could read each other's minds. No, not minds: each other's mindlessness.

But if its 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.

Watching the many faces watching their own faces as they pretended to be someone else—Felix found that strangely moving. For once in their lives, they loved themselves.

But compassion takes work, and we were young.

Roz is crying again. What she's mourning is her own good will. She tried so hard, she tried so hard to be kind and nurturing, to do the best thing. But Tony and the twins were right: no matter what you do, somebody always gets boiled.

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 subject to the temptation or feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman. It's difficult to resist, believe me. 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

Some people like to throw objects, such as glasses of water or rocks, but nail painting is more positive. If more world leaders would take it up there would be less overall suffering, in her opinion.

Maybe that was the real Bernice, I thought - kind and innocent. Maybe she was truly like that inside, and all the fighting we used to do and all her sharp and unpleasant edges - that was her way of struggling to get out of the hard skin she'd grown all over herself like a beetle shell. But no matter how she hit out and raged, she'd been stuck in there. That thought made me feel so sorry for her that I cried.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one.

For once in their lives, they loved themselves.

We would lie in those afternoon beds, afterwards, hands on each other, talking it over. Possible, impossible. What could be done? We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

I walk away from her, guilt on my hands, absolving myself: I'm a good person. She could have been dying. No one else stopped. I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly

What would I have done if I had been my mother? She must have realized what was happening to me, or that something was. Even toward the beginning she must have noted my silences, my bitten fingers, the dark scabs on my lips where I'd pulled off patches of the skin. If it were happening now, to a child of my own, I would know what to do. But then? There were fewer choices, and a great deal less was said.

know what you mean, we'd say. Or, a quaint expression you sometimes hear, still, from older people: I hear where you're coming from, as if the voice itself were a traveler, arriving from a distant place. Which it would be, which it is.

It's her second baby, she had another child, once, I know that from the Center, when she used to cry about it at night, like the rest of us only more noisily. So she ought to be able to remember this, what it's like, what's coming. But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

What is it that I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don't prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull.

You were such a sensitive child. So easily wounded. So I told you those things. I didn't want you to feel defenseless in the face of life. Life can be harsh. I wanted you to feel protected, and to know that there was a greater power watching over you. That the Universe was taking a personal interest.

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them to suit ourselves - our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies. Now that I've been one myself, I know.