Quotes About Empathy

Like love, I said, being understood creates the fear that you will never be understood again.

He doesn't comment and he doesn't criticise and this puts him in an ocean of silence compared to most people. Sometimes his silence makes me feel invisible, not to him but to myself, because as I've told you I've been criticised all my life: it's how I've come to know that I'm there.

no longer interested in socialising; in fact, increasingly he found other people positively bewildering. The interesting ones are like islands, he said: you don't bump into them on the street or at a party, you have to know where they are and go to them by arrangement

It was hard to listen while you were talking. I had found out more by listening than I had ever thought possible.

We live with an almost superstitious belief in our own differences, she said, and Luís has shown that those differences are not the result of some divine mystery but are merely the consequence of our lack of empathy, which if we had it would enable us to see that in fact we are all the same.

Later, at the train station before she leaves, my sister says to me: you have to learn to hide what you feel from the children. They will feel what they think you feel. That are only reflections of you. I don't believe that, I say. If they think you're happy, they'll be happy, my sister says. Their feelings are their own, I say.

In marriage you go away from other people, but at the end of marriage they come out to welcome you back. This is civilisation, she says. The worst thing that happened to you has brought out the best in them.

She had sat there, she said, and thought about her own lifelong habit of explaining herself, and she thought about this power of silence, which put people out of one another's reach.

She wondered whether the books she loved consoled her precisely because they were the manifestations of her own isolation.

Whatever we might wish to believe about ourselves, we are only the result of how others have treated us.

I mean, we have to read books or we'll make mistakes. If we read stories of how other people lived, we can figure out better ways to live. I mean we can look at other people's lives and not make the same mistakes they made. Or we can, like, use their examples as models for ourselves.

a brew of tea or cocoa followed, with toddlings to the cupboard and a setting out of a bright canister. Any fool can offer you champagne. But if you can win a lonely, diffident old woman, living in her memories, to give you of her tea, then and not till then have you triumphed.

I'm really quite efficient you know'. He shook his head over me. 'Too much conscience. You must find yourself very difficult to live with

Max looked around. "Where's your mutt?" "Right here, asleep. He won't bite you again. I've talked to him about it, and he's really sorry

I don't ever want to be the reason you cry again.

I always regretted how much I hurt you.

So tell me honey," he said just above a whisper, "what's got your beautiful eyes so sad?

Sometimes a person needs to hear you forgive them so they can start to forgive themselves.

Because I like to meet other strange creatures. Good to know I'm not alone.

Please, Orma, I've already gotten you in so much trouble—" "That I can't possibly get into more. Take it." He wouldn't stop glaring at me until I'd put the earring back on its cord. "You are all that's left of Linn. Her own people won't even say her name. I—I value your continued existence." I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.

You, of all people, understand the burden of having to prove that you are good enough to exist, that you are worth all the grief your mother caused everyone. Bastard equals monster in our hearts' respective lexicons; that's why you always had such insight into it.

I know the divisions in our nation that led some to extreme votes. I respect them.

When a part of our nation gets knocked down, we come together to help pick it up again. No questions asked. That's the American way, and I would expect every single member of Congress to support that sentiment with their words, their actions, and their votes.

I've been pushing for the longest time that you get the votes easier and with more enthusiasm when people feel like you're addressing their concerns.