I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who’s having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another’s viewpoint has served me well as a writer.
A love of reading shows empathy, the desire to understand how others live or act or might act – and why.
If writing really is empathy, then understanding your place in society might actually help you achieve it.
I think the most important quality for a writer to have is empathy.
The phrase ‘misuse of privilege’ is becoming a free pass to tear apart pretty much anybody we choose to. It’s becoming a devalued term, and it’s making us lose our capacity for empathy and for distinguishing between serious and unserious transgressions.
Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all.
I know some women’s rights activists have seen so much abuse that they can’t stand men, but I have a sense of empathy with the men. Without excusing the abuse they are capable of, many of them are trapped within these communities and bound by expectations they didn’t necessarily ask for.
Documentaries require an enormous amount of grit and empathy – and that is something women are incredibly strong at.
I’ve learned not to be such a show-off and to have a bit more empathy with humanity. Or at least to fake that.
There are two elements to nailing a job interview: form and substance. ‘Form’ describes the outer layer of your character – your manners, your demeanor, your social skills. ‘Substance’ describes the inner core of your character – your intellect, your empathy, your creativity.
My own feeling is we need more compassion, we need more empathy, we need more togetherness, in terms of working together.
If I had to name my superpower, it’s probably empathy.
Whether it’s a song or a television show, or a book or poem, art is the thing that cracks me open and encourages me to go on a deeper journey to find my own compassion and empathy and humanity.
Writing is weaponized empathy. It’s putting yourself in someone else’s head. It’s finding what’s in them that relates to you.
Empathy isn’t the same thing as expressing emotions. It’s not about sharing your feelings – it can be really uncomfortable if a parent cries or loses strength at the moment her daughter needs it most. The message sent is that you need to be taken care of, not the other way around.
At 10, I heard Neil Diamond’s ‘Solitary Man’ and it moved me so deeply I stood, frozen in place during school recess, feeling such empathy for the narrator in Diamond’s masterpiece that my heart was smashed.
The more extreme the story, the more successful it becomes. Emotions on high, empathy engaged, we become primed to help.
Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.
It’s got to do with putting yourself in other people’s shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting.
No human heart is denied empathy. No religion can demolish that by indoctrination. No culture, no nation and nationalism – nothing can touch it because it is empathy.
Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms.
I have always worked from that place, that if you are going to inhabit someone and get under their eyes, you need to have empathy.
Somehow we got used to death, and then we dehumanised it. We account for conflicts in figures. Ebola is 13,500 infected, 5,000 people have died… People are losing their sense of empathy, their sense of wanting to do something.
The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people’s situations.
There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.
It’s dangerous to think of yourself as a hero and someone else as a villain. It gets in the way of empathy.
My own feeling is we need more compassion, we need more empathy, we need more togetherness, in terms of working together.
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.
People of power have to show empathy and kindness to the young.
There’s a power in empathy.
Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can’t have perfection in a world of limited resources.
I always like it when writers posit writing as an act of empathy. It’s such a grand turn of phrase, such a noble ideal; empathy is so worth aiming for in life that the same must hold true in art. But personally, I can’t think too deeply about that when I’m working, or I’d never get anything down on the page.
Empathy is about two people – two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling.
Michigan has always been a swing state, so we understand that the goal is to have two political parties, debating the issues with empathy and respect.
I think empathy is a beautiful thing. I think that’s the power of film though. We have one of the most powerful, one of the greatest communicative tools known to man.
I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don’t understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.
Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation.
‘Me too’ became a term that was both succinct and powerful, and it was a way to ring up immediate empathy between survivors.
I was in the Army in the 1960s. I didn’t go to Vietnam. I went to Germany, where I drank beer. But I did have an empathy with the soldiers in Vietnam.
Empathy is why entertainment is always growing, and for millennials, everyone is judging them and trying to grab their attention by insulting them. We’re living in a time where everyone has 25 profiles, and they’re having 25 conversations.
I got a lot of empathy from my mother growing up, and I think it prevented me from ever really just writing people off.
Too often, wealthy people born on third base blithely criticize the poor for failing to hit home runs. The advantaged sometimes perceive empathy as a sign of muddle-headed weakness rather than as a marker of civilization.
There were some advantages to being a woman photographer. I think women have more empathy with the subject.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
My dad is an economist who does global development research. What he practices is a kind of quantifiable empathy: trying to empathize with systems rather than people.
As you get older you have more respect and empathy for your parents. Now I have a great relationship with both of them.
I learned a lot of empathy and openness from my parents. I know so many people who don’t have that experience.
Look, I’m a cancer survivor, all right? So I have great personal empathy for people who have pre-existing conditions and can’t get insurance.
I need my ‘art work’ or ‘entertainment work’ or whatever to have empathy for or connection to the way I experience the world as a person.
Empathy is important, openness, honesty, and an understanding for others.
Filmmaking is a language where you empathise with human situations. Unless you have empathy for characters, you shouldn’t be a filmmaker.
I cry a lot when I feel empathy. I can feel heartbroken by life, and I cry quite easily, sometimes for no reason. It’s healthy, I think.
Watching the news, there seems to be an empathy failure and miscommunication.
Virtual reality is the ‘ultimate empathy machine.’ These experiences are more than documentaries. They’re opportunities to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.
I think it’s so important that, if I’m writing about the real world, I stay true to it. I think that kids do compartmentalize, and they’re hopefully able to see it from a safe place of their own lives and, through that, learn something about empathy.
I think there’s such a fine line in a relationship. The role of imagination and privacy… how much space can you allow before that becomes distance? And similarly, imagination is empathy. That’s how you achieve empathy. It’s how you can be with another person and understand how they are in the world.
I think entrepreneurs really appreciate directness and honesty, coupled with empathy.
I think empathy is romantic. I think humor is romantic. Kindness is romantic. I think those kind of gestures of caring and love are romantic.
The arts bridge cultures; they’re good for the economy, and they’re good for fostering empathy and decency.
I think as you get older, there are things that there’s just no light side to, but you know, I guess the more you empathise with people, the more empathy you have, the less you are able to see the lighter side.
