#empathy

When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I'd bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents died. She arrived one afternoon unannounced in a taxi. She must have known instinctively that I'd take her in. I don't know how or why they released her. Probably due to overcrowding, and they had her scratch her name on a form then pushed her out the door. Or maybe she just slipped away when no one was looking (who'd notice in a place like that?)--she never did tell me and I didn't ask her. I was so happy to have her with me again that the last thing I wanted to do was break the spell by letting reality intrude. Ever since they'd dragged her away weeping with laughter and reaching out for me with our parents' blood still coating her hands with shiny red gloves, I'd felt amputated, like they'd pulled her kicking and screaming and insane out of my guts. ↗

— Michael Gira

#money

It’s like when you’re excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#yearning #madness

How can the intensity of this shame be understood by those who have never experienced it? How can they understand the strength of the motivations produced by the desire to escape from it? ↗

— Didier Eribon

#heterosexuality #homosexuality #shame #motivational

Too many people are endowed with a feeling of entitlement, but born without God-given empathy. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#pitfalls-of-the-human-race #truth-quotes #wisdom-quotes #empathy

My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy. ↗

— Chris Ware

#empathy #fortified #gave #grandmother #how

Although I'm not particularly troubled myself, I do have a lot of empathy for troubled characters. ↗

— Mia Wasikowska

#characters #empathy #i #i do #lot

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done. ↗

— Andrea Arnold

#anyone #because #being #detail #done

But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing—of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears. Honest love makes one’s soul a reflection of the partner’s moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing. That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains. ↗

— R.A. Salvatore

#the-silent-blade #beauty

Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn. ↗

— Alice Miller

#better #child #empathy #even #grows

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins. ↗

— Tara Brach

#empathy #healing #suffering #life