Quotes about Empathy

Write about your childhoods, I tell them for the umpteenth time. Write about that time in your life when you were so intensely interested in the world, when your powers of observation were at their most acute, when you felt things so deeply. Exploring and understanding your childhood will give you the ability to empathize, and that understanding and empathy will teach you to write with intelligence and insight and compassion.

What good people can do in the face of great sorrow. We help some time pass for those suffering. We sit with them in their hopeless pain and feel terrible with them, without trying to fix them with platitudes; doing this with them is just about the most gracious gift we have to offer. We give up what we think we should be doing, or think we need to get done, to keep them company.

One of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people.

Forgiveness and mercy mean that, bit by bit, you begin to outshine the resentment.

Take care of yourselves; take care of one another.

Look, if you don't have a bad attitude and lots of things wrong with you, no serious person is going to be interested. If you feel scared, outraged, confused most of the time, come on over. Have a seat.

Jesus said that whatever you did to the least of his people, you did to him, and the lifers in penitentiaries are the leastest people in this country. Just look to see whose budgets are being cut these days -- the old, the crazies, the children in Head Start -- and that's where Jesus will be.

There is so much mercy around us and in us, so much available to us if we just have the eyes and intention to see it.

So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?

Try to be a good sport, baby. Sharon feels as bad as you do. It's all right for you to be mad, but...try to be as good a sport as you can. I'll tell you. It's a run-of-the-mill shitty thing. Life is full of them. And it is ALWAYS feels better to be kind.

This is a hard planet, and we're a vulnerable species. And all I can do is pray: Help. When

All it takes is one safe person to listen, to hear, to noodge us to start over and not give up.