Quotes About Empathy

It's totally fine. I'm just giving you a hard time. I was young and in love once, so I have a vague memory of it. I get it.

Sometimes when they were talking online, she got this strange vibe. As if she could actually sense him, that she knew what it was like to be with him in person.

Instead she squeezes Mary's arm and appreciates her kindness. Her understanding. This is why people have children, even when they believe the world is going to hell, even when life is nothing but uncertainty. In hopes of being understood.

All of us are so much more alike than we want to accept.

It is so easy to notice things about people and tell them. I don't know why people don't just give out compliments every single day.

In the end only kindness matters.

Hurt people can become hurtful

The world would be a much nicer place if people only used guns on themselves.

Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.

As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her.

She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him.

There's no point discussing it given that she's blind to the small pleasures my solitude affords me. In spite of how she's clung to me over the years my point of view doesn't interest her, and this gulf between us has taught me what solitude really means.

I'm amazed at our impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves, tell stories to one another.

Men require that you caress them with your expression

I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves, just as Ovid's masterwork transformed me.

I believe that reading in a foreign language is the most intimate way of reading.

Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear. -When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend.

Voor mij is het vermogen van kunst het vermogen om ons wakker te schudden, om ons diep te raken, ons te veranderen. Wat zoeken we als we een roman lezen, een film kijken, naar een muziekstuk luisteren? We zoeken iets wat ons verplaatst, iets waarvan we ons eerder niet bewust waren. We willen onszelf transformeren.

He remembered himself sitting naked on one side of the mattress, in a room he was suddenly aware he was never again to see. He had not argued; in the wake of his shame, he became strangely efficient and agreeable, with her, with everyone.

As he watched the couple the room went dark, and he spun around. Shoba had turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew.

To translate a book is to enter into a relationship with it, to approach and accompany it, to know it intimately, word by word, and to enjoy the comfort of its company in return.

The letter is dated three weeks ago, and from it they learn that Ashima's grandmother has had a stroke, that her right side is permanently paralyzed, her mind dim. She can no longer chew, barely swallows, remembers and recognizes little of her eighty-odd years. "She is with us still, but to be honest we have already lost her," her father has written. "Prepare yourself, Ashima. Perhaps you may not see her again.

When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. You breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.