Quotes About Empathy

Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.

In a lot of ways, having a teenager isn't all that different from having a newborn. You learn to read the reactions, because they're incapable of saying exactly what it is that's causing pain.

God, what had we done? It didn't really matter. Piper had been the kind of friend with whom I didn't have to fill in the spaces with random conversation. It was okay to just be with her. She knew that sometimes I needed that - to not have to take care of anyone or anything, to simply exist in my own space, adjacent to hers.

I truly believed that the cost of success for us shouldn't be the cost of failure for a good friend.

You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.

You say you don't see color…but that's all you see. You're so hyperaware of it, and of trying to look like you aren't prejudiced, you can't even understand that when you say race doesn't matter all I hear is you dismissing what I've felt, what I've lived, what it's like to be put down because of the color of my skin.

Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.

She understood how a world jammed with phones, email, and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone.

Prejudice goes both ways, you know. There are people who suffer from it, and there are people who profit from it.

when people we love make choices, we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness.

Her hands quieted. Yeah. Because even if the law says that no one is responsible for anyone else, helping someone who needs it is the right thing to do. I sat down beside her, close enough that the skin of her arm hummed right next to mine. You really believe that? She looked down at her lap Yeah. Then how, I asked, can you walk away from me?

You can't hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.

There are legions of us, I realized. The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them. And the mothers who have let their broken babies go, who look at our children and see instead the faces of the ones they never met.

She understood what it was like to stand right in front of people you loved, even though they could not see you.

When you love someone, you don't see parts of him you don't like.

An apology with a defense built in isn't much of an apology

Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late that we've wounded the people we are trying to protect.

It's the difference between dancing along the eggshell crust of acquaintance and diving into the messy center of a relationship. It's not always perfect; it's not always pleasant—but because it is rooted in respect, it is unshakable.

The gun slipped on Emily's temple, and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart.

Until I understood why you didn't cry, even though it hurt: there are kinds of pain you couldn't speak out loud.

There is nothing worse than silence, strung like heavy beads on too delicate a conversation.

There are some nights when you just want to know there's someone else besides you in this wide world.

Well, you have to find that rare someone for whom you're not putting on a show. Someone who shines a spotlight in your direction—not because you're who they need you to be, or who they want you to be…just because you're you.

But that's what love is, isn't it? When it hurts you more to see someone suffer than it does to take the pain away?