Quotes About Empathy

Villains are fun. I think the important thing in playing them is that they don't see themselves as villains. It lets you be a little more expansive.

I didn't expect to feel pathos for the villains in our show. I feel quite moved in several of our episodes; I never realized that a show like 'Motive,' which aims for a broad appeal, could have that sort of emotional impact.

It feels bad to play a bad guy. I did George W. Bush for years, and I hated him. But you have to give full voice to the villains. You have to have really convincing villains, or it's not worth anything as drama or comedy.

I think many villains have the burden of not being very human.

That's the thing about writing for a lot of the villains is that, as a writer, you kind of have to put the best part of your own personality aside and instead focus on whatever little strange quirks you may have in your personality.

What I saw in Black Lightning, Jefferson Pierce, even the villains, are aspects of myself.

To me, the more interesting villains are the ones you can, in some sense, relate to or sympathize with at times. Maybe you sympathize with them one moment; the next moment, they do something truly atrocious, and you feel bad you ever sympathized with them in the first place.

I feel the best villains are the ones you have feelings for.

There's this artistic drive or something in me that impels me to sympathize with villains, but it's maybe not a great impulse as someone who wants to do activism as well.

We want our villains and antagonists to have distinct motivations.

Look, I don't think villains are interesting when you can't tell where they're coming from.

Every character, before they are heroes or villains, they are human beings.

I hope that every film I make has something to offer in the area of making people feel either vindicated or different in terms of who they are.

I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.

There is a man out there who prosecuted me. He's been constantly calling different lawyers, telling them how afraid of me his is. He's afraid I'll come after him now that I'm out, because of all the horrible things he did to me. The furthest thing from my mind I would ever do is waste a day being vindictive.

I think that women really entwine with the people that they become close to in a way that men don't - and so, when they are forced to disentwine, you can't remove the vines without doing some damage.

Even when I have a vintage play, I draw in elements from current scenarios, so that modern audiences can empathize with the characters.

What I always loved about vintage clothes is that you let the woman who wore it before you live on in some way.

When someone has told me they have the 'world's worst knees' I've done all I can to find them a hem line that hides them. Luckily, as my shop is predominantly vintage, I have clothes from all decades and therefore pieces of all length.

I love Viola Davis.

I saw 'The Help' on DVD. I was blown away by Viola Davis: she really straddled that fine line in the plot between what was tragic and what was heart-warming.

I would absolutely love to do something with Viola Davis or Meryl Streep. I just think both of those women fall so deep into their characters that you are no longer looking at the actresses, you are looking at the characters they embraced.

Much of the time, the things we feel guilty about are not our issues. Another person behaves inappropriately or in some way violates our boundaries. We challenge the behavior, and the person gets angry and defensive. Then we feel guilty.

Because a human being is endowed with empathy, he violates the natural order if he does not reach out to those who need care. Responding to this empathy, one is in harmony with the order of things, with dharma; otherwise, one is not.