Quotes About Empathy

you even put into words the confession that you made a mistake, that you want to turn back time and try again? How do you say it without hurting the people who have been sitting across from you at the breakfast table for fifteen years, who know your Starbucks order and which side of the bed to leave you at a hotel?

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.

In life, perfect pitch is the ability to know someone from the inside out, even better maybe than she knows herself.

A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you.

Honey, Kate is not going to die sooner because you have one more glass of mine, or because you stay overnight in a hotel, or because you let yourself crack up at a bad joke. So sit your ass back down and turn up the volume and act like you're a normal person.

Just because you can't see something, doesn't mean I don't. I can't explain it, I can't understand it, and I can't deny it. So I sure as hell am not gonna fight it.

When you let people into the inner sanctum of your life, you risk having them see the heart of you.

I thought that if I loved you hard enough, I could move mountains for you; I could make you fly. It didn't matter to me how that happened—just as long as it did. I wasn't thinking of who I might hurt, only who I could rescue.

But Edward doesn't even flinch; it's as if he's reading the text of me with some magic internal Rosetta stone that makes him understand what I say is not what I mean at all.

most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us.

It was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don't like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn't speak that language. They didn't learn it as children and they didn't manage to pick it up as adults, either.

You don't make peace only with God. You make it with people. Sin isn't global. It's personal. If you do wrong to someone, the only way to fix that is to go to that same person and do right by him.

When I kept someone else from getting hurt, did I hurt you?

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future. I'm moving on to peace and happiness.

When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the one person who doesn't.

Babies are such blank slates. They don't come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don't like. They don't come into this world with anything, really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver.

I believe that there are five things we need to say to people we love before they die, and I give this advice to caregivers: I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye. I tell them that they can interpret those prompts any way they like, and nothing will have been left unsaid.

Over the years, he's learned empathy the way I might learn Greek, translating an image or situation in the clearinghouse of his mind and trying to attach the appropriate sentiment to it, but never really fluent in the language.

The best thing is what you think should be done. The rightest thing is what needs to be done-when you think not just of you and how you feel, but also the extra stuff-who else is involved, and what's happened before, and what the rules say.

when you loved someone, you didn't want to be the one who brought their world crashing down.

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice. Two

He could stand pain, himself. He just couldn't stand hers

When the elevator doors open there is only one other person inside it, a homeless man with electric blue sunglasses and six plastic grocery bags filled with rags. Close the doors, dammit, he yells as soon as we step inside. Can't you see I'm blind? [...] From the back, the homeless man shoves between us, his bounty rustling in his arms. Stop yelling, he shouts. though we stand in utter silence. Can't you tell that I'm deaf?

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