Victor LaValle Quotes

I think it's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.

I am truly passionate and concerned about the lack of empathy that people show towards one another.

When you meet someone, treat them as if they were in serious trouble, and you will be right more than half the time.

I know it's impossible for you to see your peers this way, but when you're older, you start to see them--the bad kids and the good kids and all kids--as people. They're just people, who deserve to be cared for.

I've never been interested in things that sparkle and shine; I'm more interested in people.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

When we watch stories, we learn empathy, we learn compassion, and hopefully we achieve some sort of understanding.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

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.

I think that I have a sensitivity toward people, and that is a strength.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

To love a person is to know and love the person. But we can pick up an enormous amount about another human being just by exchanging a couple of sentences. It's not yet knowledge; it's an intuition that motivates you to want to find out more.

The wiser you get, the more experience you have, and the more you see people for who they are as human beings, as opposed to figures you have to fight against.

I don't see people. I don't see men and women at all. When I see them, I see... their mothers and fathers. I see how old they are inside. Like when I look at the president, or anybody in a record company, or a store owner, I may see a little boy behind the counter with the face of an old man. And that's who I talk to.

I think, at the end of the day, acting and activism are both about empathy. You're trying to get people to see other people as real and human. And to care.

If you empathize with your fellow humans on stage, you can't help but do so offstage as well.

We think empathy is innate, but it's not. It's a muscle you're working.

Empathy seems to be seen as a weakness. We condition people to withdraw it to succeed. But really, it needs to be re-seen as a strength again if there is to be any kind of hope in the world.

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.

I don't understand why people aren't a little more generous with each other.

Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

Understanding comes with life. As a man grows he sees life and death, he is happy and sad, he works, plays, meets people - sometimes it takes a lifetime to acquire understanding, because in the end understanding simply means having sympathy for people.

Maybe if everyone walked around being in touch with each other's hidden pain it could work out and even be beautiful, but it doesn't feel safe to be the only compassionate person on the planet.

We can't love our neighbors till we know how crooked their hearts are.

We need to have empathy. When we lose empathy, we lose our humanity.