Sarah Dessen Quotes

How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?

Well, I was a big fan of the book and therein a huge fan of the girl Precious. And so I felt like I knew this girl. I felt like I'd grown up alongside her. I felt like she was in my family. She was my friend and she was like people I didn't want to be friends with.

She is sighing deeply now with sympathy and delight - the delight of an addict when someone else admits he's hooked, too.

I think sometimes the very reason we go through something is so that we can be empathetic with another person later on.

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.

I show them the funny part, the silly part, the laughing part, the crazy part and then the really deep, deep part where I'm talking from my heart to these people. Because I've been through everything they've been through.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.

I traffic in empathy. I try to be vulnerable with people so they can be vulnerable back. I've always been searching for empathy in other people. It's when I feel most not alone.

Poetry is partly sympathy, don't you think? If it's any good, it gets people to think about others' points of view.

It is easier to speak to those who have had similar experiences than to those who are as yet ignorant.

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

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.

Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems.

Above all, I try to create an emotion to which others can respond.

Part of the allure of watching characters on-screen is to be able to put yourself in his or her shoes or to be able to relate to what he or she is going through or what he or she is thinking.

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

I felt along with her - not the physical pain, of course, but all her mental anguish. You can't be detached. She needed to have someone who understood what was happening in her mind.

But you can't realize, you can't know what another person goes through.

We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us

You hope that when you're playing someone possibly unsympathetic that you can bring them something redeeming, something people can hang onto.

Writing is weaponized empathy. It's putting yourself in someone else's head. It's finding what's in them that relates to you.

When you are in someone's home, in their bed, you see the world from their eyes. You understand 'the other' is not so other.

When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they're feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.

The adage is true: Walk a mile in my shoes - or drive a mile in my car. There is nothing quite like sitting in the seat yourself.

It's hard to put yourself in someone else's head.