Quotes About Empathy

We saw so many sad and helpless people. I remember looking at people on the TeeVee from other countries who was all drenched and scared and hungry and even though Mammaloose and I don't have lots of money I never felt like those people and never thought we would look like those people. Now we were the same. We are all the same, I guess, once we are homeless, once what we know is gone.

I like movies I can relate to.

If we are not intentionally conscious in our communications, we are likely to cause unintentional harm.

She imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time, and its only renewal came from giving it away.

There is unequaled satisfaction in composing words on a blank page, sealing them in an envelope, writing an address in my own messy hand, adding a stamp, walking it to the mailbox, and raising the flag. It's like preparing a gift, and I feel like I receive one when a letter arrives....

Loneliness is not about what happens when you are alone, but what happens when you are with others. It is about how willing you are to open your heart and allow another to get close to you.

In "Shadow of a Doubt," I was trying to describe the connection you feel when your eyes meet another person's. You project all kinds of things on those eyes, feel them seeing into and past you, sometimes feel the sex behind them too.

one of those mutual I-can-tell-you-are-a-super-sensitive-and-emotional-person-too sorts of connections.

We spend so much time ruminating on how others disappoint us that we devote very little to the times they grant us their unique generosity and strength. But the really delightful thing about other people surprising you is that it makes you believe you just might be capable off surprising yourself.

Don't be jealous of anyone. I guarantee you, if everyone walked into a room, and dumped their problems onto the floor, when they saw what everyone else's problems were, they'd be scrambling to get their own problems back before someone else got to them first.

Love is constantly saying you're sorry, even when you know damn well you're right.

Work hard. Be nice. Hurt no one.

...treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can't until you do understand.

And then there are the rare ones who know love, who understand it. Who freely give of themselves, demanding only a return of that love,that trust.

treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can't until you do understand.

The best thing Dr. Folsom taught me (though I didn't realize it at the time) was not how to see nature but how to get along with people who see it differently. It is better to touch a heart than it is to teach a fact.

Our frustration with others is always greatest when we're frustrated with ourselves

I'm telling you this because I believe all our hearts run together in the same way. We collide and accrete and become something of a whole, an amalgam of hearts and dreams, of friends, neighbors, and fellow travelers who influence each other across generations.

Our frustration with others is always greatest when we're frustrated with ourselves.

I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.

This is a fundamental fact of life, a law of the universe, and the moment you embrace it is the moment you are free. Everyone gets at least one sociopath, one a-hole, one hurtful narcissistic jerk who barges or stumbles or falls into their life and causes pain .

Sacrificing her own safety and comfort, a broken young woman lay down in the snow, side by side with a broken young horse.

He was a dog, but once you get to know them and you look deep into their eyes, year after year, you no longer see an animal; instead you begin to see the depth of any human capability of emotion. It is given freely, and the wealth of comfort it brings cannot be completely understood until it is taken from you.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. —GANDHI