Quotes About Empathy

I started out hoping to remind people at some point in the novel that we should be loving and kind. But then the theme usurped my life, spilling over into my novels until love was no longer a small voice, but now my purpose as a writer.

Some of us may just, in one-on-one conversations with our family, with our friends, over the back fence with our neighbors, talk about the reality of our lives and realize that we're not alone, that we have a right to be physically safe and emotionally safe in our own homes.

Sisters function as safety nets in a chaotic world simply by being there for each other." —Carol Saline

Excluding your partner's perspective and insisting on your own, no matter how you put it, implies that being right is more important to you than how your partner feels and more important than the well-being of your relationship.

Protection involves caring about her emotions more than the content of what she says. You can disagree with the content, as long as you value her.

How Do You Make It Hard for Your Partner to Give You What You Want?

Be there with your partner's feelings. Don't ignore them, try to "fix it," or try to talk about it or drag him or her out of it.

This is an important point about parenting, too. You're not going to help your sons and daughters by telling them that they shouldn't feel the way they do. You'll help them by being in the emotion with them for a few moments while they work their own way out of it.

The bottom line is: Be there with her. Don't ignore it; don't "fix" it, tell her what to do, or try to drag her out of it. If you're just there with her a short time, the two of you can usually step out of the puddle together.

The great test of masculinity in our modern era is not going into the woods and eating bugs to prove we can overcome our fear in a bold display of our survival skills; it's learning to protect the women in our lives without trying to control them.

nothing soothes fear and shame like connection.

Women, the men in your life will definitely be more loving, compassionate, and nurturing if you can understand and accept their vulnerability to shame and reduce the ways you trigger it.

Be at your best when your partner is at his or her worst.

How Could You Make It Easier?

Developing the ability to experience the world through your partner's eyes, while holding on to your own perspective, may be the single most important skill in intimate relationships.

The truth is that we know the dogs need people. But people need the dogs even more sometimes. To teach people how good they really can be.

What happened last night was my fault," I said. "I put up the rope, Sarah. I must have done it wrong." "Fault?" said Sarah. "Oh, Caleb, I want you to listen to me. There comes a time when fault doesn't matter. Things happen. And we can't blame ourselves--or someone else--forever." I heard a noise behind me, and saw Papa standing there, Cassie beside him. I knew he had heard Sarah's words.

I must have intuitively known even then, though, that if you ask a certain type of guy about himself, it's as good as winding a wind-up toy.

To be faithful, he wrote, a person had to be concerned less about himself and more about caring for his neighbor.

But sometimes, I hate myself for hating him. Simply because he is an ordinary boy.

Hey, S.T.," Sydney says finally. I don't budge. She nudges me with her elbow. "You want to know something?" I still can't look up. But I nod. "It's not your fault either." She says this like it's not big deal. Like it's nothing. But it's everything.

Love is when you fry the other person's bacon even if you're a vegetarian.

Let us live without hate among those who hate

You were born with the power to change others. You change people by the way you treat them. That is what changes the human heart.