Quotes About Empathy

There are things I didn't see before, like how nice it is to have someone around. Not the white knight whisking you away, but the fellow who sits at your table every night and tells you what he is thinking.

Maybe no one can know how it is for anyone else.

Are you always this wise, Ruth?" "Only when it comes to other people's lives.

I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.

I've sometimes thought that being loved a little less than others can actually make a person, rather than ruin them.

Sorry was maybe the loneliest feeling of all, I understood, because it only brought you back to yourself.

What is all the suffering for if not so we can see how alike we are, and not alone? Where will the mercy come from, if not from us?

It was as if we'd pressed ourselves together until his bones passed through mine and we were the same person, ever so briefly.

Is it nice? It's hard to care about people. You end up fretting all the time and feeling helpless, hoping they'll live forever. Only no one does.

But what does it all add up to? What is all the suffering for if not so we can see how alike we are, and not alone? Where will the mercy come from, if not from us?

I also liked to look around at the houses surrounding the park and wonder about the people who filled them, what kinds of marriages they had and how they loved or hurt each other on any given day, and if they were happy, and whether they thought happiness was a sustainable thing.

And if I tried to talk to him or, God forbid, ask him to take it easy on the whisky, he'd lash out. "Oh, sod off, Beryl. It's all easy for you, isn't it?

Perhaps I will begin by walking where he has walked." Arap

How is it I'm the enemy when she's the other woman? That seems very unfair, doesn't it?

Who knows what anyone deserves? We like to play judge and jury, but we're all a rotten mess under our skins.

I needed peace just as much as he did, and to believe in the value of my work again. I wanted to run far away until the dark voices in my head quieted. But his needs upstaged mine.

it's not what happens to us that matters most, but how we can learn to carry it.

He's never been a throwaway kid. Never experienced the world in a woman's body, or a girl's. Never had a reason to confuse love with suffering.

Maybe I've been unfair with her from the beginning, seeing her in a mirror and hating myself. She's been struggling to do the right thing, even when her own hurt has made that harder than it should ever

The sensitive readers, they have a certain look. You can al. most smell it on them, that they need books to feel okay.

Life is full of messes. Your mistakes aren't bigger than anyone else's.

reached behind me to adjust the stockings again. "Your mother doesn't like me." "She just doesn't want to lose me. That's how mothers are.

what happens to us that matters most, but how we can learn to carry it. I'm starting to understand the difference, and how maybe the only way we can survive what's here, and what we are, is together.

No one really knows how it is with anyone else. That's the truth. That's our only real retaliation when the gossip starts to churn.