top of page
"Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Empathy quotes

"When someone is cruel, harsh, mean, to not take their words personally is one thing, but to hear the silent cry within those words is another. This sort of perspective can not only liberate us from crippling self-doubt in the face of criticism, it can also liberate us from automatically becoming blind participants in the interaction patterns that the cruel person has become accustomed to-a favour we do for the other person as much as for ourselves."

"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."

"If you can't see some part of yourself in every single person you encounter, then you're not looking closely enough, at the person or at yourself."

"Empathize with others. You may easily get into a situation where you need the understanding of others."

"There are some great positive quotes out there that I can't quite share as I wonder how a victim in a war torn country could be expected to see from their perspective?"

"People talk and people listen, but very few care enough to help."

"Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, 'This blows ass.' She nods sympathetically. She doesn't understand, but of course, in her way she understands completely."

"In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L'ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means 'I have experienced that on my own skin.' Meaning, I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you're going through."
Explore more quotes by Neil Gaiman

"Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."

"A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question."

"It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois."

"There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book."

"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."

"You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly... But - you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar... Ask yourselves, all of you... What power would hell have if those imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven?"

"Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city."

"A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart."

"I hope that in this year to come, YOU make mistakes. Because if YOU are making mistakes, then YOU are making NEW things, trying NEW things, learning, living, pushing YOURself, changing YOURself, changing YOUR world. YOU're doing things YOU've never done before, n MORE importantly, YOU're doing something."

"It's a weapon, I understand?""In the wrong hands, all tools are weapons. In the right hands, everything is a weapon, or nothing is."
bottom of page