Quotes About Empathy

All conflict can be traced back to someone's feelings getting hurt

Madeleine thought, "thank you darling, because that always works, doesn't it, telling a woman to calm down

Sam always said she was overly sensitive to sounds because she was a musician, but she didn't think that was true; he was just astonishingly insensitive to them.

She needed to find someone who would let her say all sorts of horrible, bitchy things and not judge her for it or pass them on.

She combines them all into one giant sumo wrestler of humanity and punches him again and again in his big flabby stomach.

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

She still had no solution, no way out, but for just this moment she was sitting opposite someone who understood.

You're allowed to grieve your loss even if it's embarrassing

was funny how she'd always thought she had ample supplies of empathy; it turned out that to be truly empathetic she had to experience it.

When she was a child her mother had once told her shyness was almost a form of selfishness. "You see, when you hang your head like that, darling, people think you don't like them!

Their friends had got so old that whenever Connie bought a get-well card she also bought a sympathy card at the same time, to save herself the trouble of going back to the newsagent when they didn't 'get well'.

looked back tenderly and condescendingly at herself a year ago: all that unnecessary drama! There was enough love to go around for everyone.

They were real, there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

Domestic violence victims often don't look at all like you'd expect them to look," said Susi. "And their stories don't always sound as black-and-white as you'd expect them to sound.

Her husband was a patient man, but she had noticed a glazed look on his face as she'd talked, admittedly for quite a long time,

You could try as hard as possible to imagine someone else's tragedy – drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall – but nothing truly hurt until it happened to you. Most of all, to your child.

your husband tells you about finding a corpse, you can't then immediately follow it with, "Fancy some pasta?

There is something about Veronika that makes Sophie want to fold her arms tightly across her chest and say, 'You can't have any more of me.

Parents do tend to judge each other. I don't know why. Maybe because none of us really know what we're doing? And I guess that can sometimes lead to conflict. Just not normally on this sort of scale.

It turned out that a conversation with Bonnie was just like being in labour: the pain could always get much, much worse. chapter fifty-three 'Ziggy is a lovely little boy,' said the psychologist.

Sharing is caring!" "You

She'd learned that with her daughters. Don't say a word. Don't ask a question. Give them enough time and they'll finally tell you what's on their minds. It was like fishing. It took silence and patience. (Or so she'd heard.

You don't want lottery wins for your enemies, but you don't want tragedies for them either. Then they got the upper hand.

Sometimes when talking to somebody she was suddenly revolted by herself, aware of how eagerly she was leaning forward, chin jutting, mimicking the other person's gestures, moving with them, nodding and smiling, gently nudging their conversation along with a constant stream of appreciative chuckles, soothing 'hmmms' and surprised exclamations. 'Really!' 'Did he?' 'You're kidding!' Love me, love me!