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"If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they force you to imagine what it's like to be somebody else. Which increasingly is something we all need to know."
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Exlpore more Empathy quotes
"Grover started to sniffle and I figured if I didn't cheer him up he'd either start bawling or chewing up my mattress. He tends to eat household objects whenever he gets upset."
"If my mind was in your body going through the same circumstances. I would act differently, and likewise. Judging in nature is separation."
"One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals we endure, from those we befriended and loved, can make us cynical and turn our hearts into flint " on which only the matches of anger and bitterness can be struck into flame. By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism,and sweeten the bitter heart."
"Don't talk, just listen, and feel with all your heart."
"Neuroscience makes us connect with each other at an emotional level. It makes us make friends. It makes us dream more positively. It makes us more optimistic about ourselves and the world even in our darkest days. It makes us achieve our goal endowed with strength even through immense miseries. It allows us to attain the subjective reality of our fellow humans. Imbued with the understanding of the mind we can walk in the shoes of other people."
"Some people are highly empathic, some people are telempathic, or telepathic, some are clairempathic, while others are claircognizant, clairvoyant, clairaliant, clairaudient, clairgustant, clairsentient; and a very few are all of the above. The great amount of confusion and inner strife that accompanies one or more of these conditions, can be calmed and soothed first by acceptance, second by the humility to be okay with the fact that you are stuck with it forever, and third by honing these conditions to their best possible uses and most polished states."
"We make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies."
"The theory of positivity teaches us to, "always look on the bright side" and to, "point out the bright side to others". However, any highly empathic individual will know, that this mindset alienates us from other people. What connects us with other people is the ability to identify with what they are feeling and thinking, regardless of whether or not we've actually been in their place before. If you want to point someone out to the light, first you need to get into their dark cave with them, light a candle, and say, "Hey, I'm here with you and look, remember what the light feels like?" That's the kind of positivity that actually bears real change in people, in the world."
Explore more quotes by Margaret Atwood
"And then she began to cry, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she said it was because I was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she'd been reading."
"Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon..."
"All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard."
"Men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit."
"Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn't as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor - people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always - or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumour, and rumours are hard to pin down."
"I was taking something away from her, although she didn't know it. I was filching. Never mind that it was something she apparently didn't want or had no use for, had rejected even; still, it was hers, and if I took it away, this mysterious "it" I couldn't quite define."
"I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black."
"In the old days, trouble was kept in the family, which is still the best place for it, not that there's ever a best place for trouble. Why stir everything up again after that many years, with all concerned tucked, like tired children, so neatly into their graves?"
"Falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state, according to him. In addition it was humiliating, because it put you at a disadvantage, it gave the love object too much power. As for sex per se, it lacked both challenge and novelty, and was on the whole a deeply imperfect solution to the problem of intergenerational genetic transfer."
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