Quotes About Empathy

But come. No explaining or mending. Be beside me somewhere.

Without context, we'd all be monsters.

But I dig Negroes. I dig them all the way.

Touch had always saved them in the past. No matter the anger or hurt, no matter the depth of the aloneness, a touch, even a light and passing touch, reminded them of their long togetherness.

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away (from the animal, our plate, our concern, ourselves) or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something

You're incredibly beautiful,' I told her, because she was fat, so I thought it would be an especially nice compliment, and also make her like me again, even though I was sexist.

Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire?

I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy.

Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine.

She saw through the shell of me into the center of me

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.

Maybe I'll try to be more patient with morons.

Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.' I read that in a book somewhere and it's stuck in my head. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not true. More likely, the young and the old are lonely in different ways, in their own ways...

It hurts me when you do not want to hurt me.

What is suffering? I'm not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans — small and large, crude and multifaceted — that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at.

Someone needed to invent a way to be close to people without having to see them, or talk to them on the phone, or write (or read) letters, or e-mails, or texts.

That's the difference between heaven and hell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other!

We just stood there, facing each other, but nine floors apart.

A Seeing Eye bitch is not only for blind people but for people who pine for the negative of loneliness.

she cried and cried and cried, there weren't any napkins nearby so I ripped the page from the book - I don't speak. I'm sorry. - and used it to dry her cheeks, my explanation and apology ran down her face like mascara (..)

The end of suffering does not justify the suffering

I decided then and there never to become someone who told jokes when explanations were impossible.

And the general shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything.' If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.

That's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that the love is there.