Quotes About Empathy

I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.

I'd always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn't that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidentally ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say.

We give anonymously because the sackfuls of thank-you letters break our hearts with their clumsy handwriting and hopeless phonetic spelling.

I don't know that it had anything to do with us," my father said. But how could it have not? Doesn't the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces?

My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for _who_ I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions who hate you for _what_ you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. I haven't got the slightest idea of how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

It's always so satisfying when you can twist someone's hatred into guilt--make her realize that she was wrong, too quick to judge, too unwilling to look beyond her own petty concerns.

Drawing attention to Gretchen's weight was the sort of behavior my mother referred to as 'stirring the turd,' and I did it a lot that summer.

didn't need a fifteen-minute conversation, just some human interaction. It can be had, and easily: a gesture, a joke, something that says, "I live in this world too.

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

The woman had decided that I was a hard-ass, one of those guys who refuse under any circumstances to do anyone a favor. But it's not true. I just prefer that the favor be my idea, and that it leaves me feeling kind rather than bullied and uncomfortable.

When it happens to you it's a national tragedy— Why aren't the papers reporting this? you wonder. Only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it really is.

My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps. Sometime me cry alone at night. That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay.

The nice thing about crowds is that someone can throw a bottle and you don't take it personally.

I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job is to convert rather than listen. ... It's not that I don't like her - far from it - I just worry that, without a regular job and the proper linoleum, she'll fall through a crack and disappear to a place where we can't find her.

Other people's pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding.

Following a brief period of hard-won independence she came to appreciate the fact that people aren't foolish as much as they are kind.

She hit bottom when she physically attacked a deaf-mute. This was a boy of fourteen, a beloved neighborhood figure who delivered for the nearby deli.

A wise man once said that in order to communicate, you have to be able to speak in someone else's language.

started feeling real sorry for everybody, even though they were screaming and acting silly. I thought about how much work it was to have fun, and how brave we all were for going to the trouble, since the easiest thing would be to just moan and cry and bite the walls, because we're all going to die anyway, sooner or later. Isn't that sad? I saw how every human life is a story, and the story always ends badly.

living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.

It's common to be misread by people who don't know you.

I'm not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won't stop crying, but at least now it'll be doing it for a good reason.

You're not supposed to talk about your good deeds, I know. It effectively negates them and in the process makes people hate you. If there's a disaster, for instance, and someone tells me he donated five thousand dollars to the relief effort—this while I gave a lesser amount, or nothing at all—I don't think, Goodness, how bighearted you are, but, rather, Fuck you for making me look selfish.

How does someone undress you with his eyes when you're already undressed?" I asked. "By that point what's he looking at, your soul?