Quotes About Empathy

The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me.

No matter who else is mourning, you're in your own little cell. Even when people try to comfort you, you're aware that now there is a barrier between you and them, made of the horrible thing that happened, that keeps you isolated.

For the first time in my life I begin to understand how a parent my hit a child--it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't.

For every person you make happy, there's another one you disappoint.

What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?

Here are the things I know for sure: When you think you're right, you are most likely wrong. Things that break—be they bones, hearts, or promises—can be put back together but will never really be whole. And, in spite of what I said, you can miss a person you've never known. I learn this over and over again

Hunger, she often tells me, has nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the mind. What Mary really runs isn't a bakery, but a community.

I think about following her, but I want to give Zoe a minute alone with her mother. I want them to have the shift and redistribution of their relationship that I never got to have with my own mom, that acrobatic feat of love where everything is turned upside down and yet they are both still able to keep their balance.

The point is, if someone abandons you, it may be less about you and more about them.

You can be happy for someone else's good fortune but that doesn't mean you forget your own bad luck.

When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own.No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.

You can't grieve something if you don't let yourself get close enough to care.

the part of the brain, physiologically, that allows us to blame everything on people we do not really know is the same part of the brain that allows us to have compassion for strangers

Sometimes your kids will say the nastiest things, won't they, Rose? You want to ask, 'Whose child is this?'"Rose chuckled."But usually, they're just in some kind of pain. They need to work it out.

I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.You ask me what to do about them.It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.Face that one first.

Work for purpose, be for others.

God gave you two hands one belongs to you and the other to your fellow man.

It's hard to make things right for everyone.""But if everybody helped just one person, lots of people would get helped.

When people go to work they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home.

We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories for all our differences turn out if we listen well to be our stories also.

Respecting people is an important part of life, whether it's the person doing janitorial work or the person above you. It doesn't matter who you are: I'm going to respect you.

I'm relieved that after all these years of doing atrocity work, I still cry my eyes out every time I read the paper in the morning. It's surprising, actually.

One thing I learned particularly at Yale was how to work with others. Having studied so long trying to master myself, the biggest challenge was learning about the other person's work.

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.