Quotes About Empathy

While it's really hard to do, at the same time, I'm escaping my body, which I really want to do. I'm living someone else's life. I get very intensely into the story, into the interviews and the research. I'm experiencing things along with my subjects. I have a freedom I don't have in my physical life.

That's my ambition: that you look at the pictures and realize what complex, fascinating, interesting people every single one of my subjects is.

I am often drawn to what appear at first to be 'dark' or 'difficult' subjects, but which, upon further examination, are always and only reflections of the ways human beings attempt, however clumsily, badly, or well, to connect with others.

I want to stay in touch with what I have in common with my subjects, with the places where are equally implicated with whatever is wrong with the culture.

I spend several years trying to get inside the brain and heart of my subjects, listening to the interior monologues in their letters, and when I have to bridge the chasms between the factual evidence, I try to make an intuitive leap through the eyes and motivation of the person I'm writing about.

My job is to listen and to ask questions and to be respectful and win the trust of my subjects so that I can work my way into their memories and their point of view.

I think that if journalists, reporters who spend a lot of time on a story, are honest with themselves, we all have feelings about our subjects - I mean, unless you're a robot.

I think there are definitely a lot of subjects I don't share with people, but I'm not sure where that border is.

To nurture the sort of relationships that will truly help propel you towards accomplishing great things, you need to forget transactional networking and focus on having in-depth conversations with fewer people about subjects you really care about.

As a documentary filmmaker, I try to be sensitive to my subjects.

People treat serious subjects so seriously, which is so obvious a way of dealing with them. I'm always thinking that the best way of dealing with them is to show people as human beings.

I love the challenge of taking these really complicated subjects and trying to humanise them.

I don't think, there's no possible way for me, anyway, to play a character that I haven't found some sort of sublime compassion for and I related to Deborah on a way that almost, initially, almost in a way maybe someone in the audience might.

Sometimes you get submerged by emotion. I think it's very important to express it - which doesn't necessarily mean hitting someone.

I will always go for the submission instead of hurting my opponent.

It gives a different kind of high when, as an actor, I get to submit myself to the character I play.

If you subscribe to any moral code that says you should care for humanity, obviously black people will fit into that category.

Ultimately, I do my best to not subscribe to things that are unnecessarily negative, harmful, or hurtful to somebody.

There's so much to consume that it's very easy to read a headline in the news outlets that you subscribe to that you maybe support and go 'This is how I feel.'

There's nothing wrong with being help. But it's very wrong that we presume people of colour are in a subservient position. That's problematic.

There are two elements to nailing a job interview: form and substance. 'Form' describes the outer layer of your character - your manners, your demeanor, your social skills. 'Substance' describes the inner core of your character - your intellect, your empathy, your creativity.

I think I enjoy playing human beings no matter the substance of their character.

What I have that's special in my music is substance. It's music that people can really relate to. I know I'm gonna rap something that somebody has already been through in their life, something that they will understand.

There's really no substitute for being able to sit across from someone, have eye contact, see and read their body language, hear the inflection in their voice in a real way.