Quotes About Empathy

I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate it from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them...

She looked up at me, her eyes large with compassion, with understanding of the solitude and incivility of grief.

All my life, people have taken my shyness for sullenness, snobbery, bad temper of one sort or another.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

You don't feel a great deal of emotions for other people, do you? I was taken aback. What are you talking about? I said. Of course I do. Do you? He raised an eyebrow. I don't think so. It doesn't matter, he said, after a long, tense pause. I don't, either.

It's awful being a child," she said, simply, "at the mercy of other people.

In films, we are voyeurs, but in novels, we have the experience of being someone else: knowing another person's soul from the inside. No other art form does that. And this is why sometimes, when we put down a book, we find ourselves slightly altered as human beings. Novels change us from within.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can never truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?

I see that as usual I've gone on too long and that I'm running out of room, but I do hope that you are happy and well, and it's all a little less lonely out there than you may have feared. If there's anything I can do for you back here, or if I can help you in any way, please know that I will.

That little guy, said Boris in the car on the way to Antwerp. You know the painter saw him-he wasn't painting that bird from his mind, you know? That's a real little guy, chained up on the wall, there. If I saw him mixed up with dozen other birds all the same kind, I could pick him out, no problem. And he's right. So could I. And if I could go back in time I'd clip the chain in a heartbeat and never care a minute that the picture was never painted.

you can live many lives by reading books.

A month or two before, I would have been appalled at the idea of any murder at all. But that Sunday afternoon, as I actually stood watching one, it seemed the easiest thing in the world. How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.

Te sorprendería saber hasta qué punto las pequeñas cosas cotidianas pueden sacarnos de nuestra desesperación.

really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own.

Deprendi miserum et

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

BEFORE BORIS, I HAD borne my solitude stoically enough, without realizing quite how alone I was.

picking up the phone to say hello, somehow I never had. "Are you okay?

Boris shrugged. "Who cares? If he is good to you? None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?

Very softly—so softly I could barely hear her—I heard the girl whisper: "It had to live its whole life like that?" I'd been wondering the same thing;

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

some clear, personable spark seemed to fly up through his eyes and I saw the creature he really was—and he, I believe, saw me. For an instant we were wired together and humming, like two engines on the same circuit.