Nicholas Sparks Quotes

We're not hard people.

I don't want someone else to go through and live through the life that I have had to live through in terms of the challenges that I face.

God knows what it's like to be a human. When I talk to him about deadlines or long lines or tough times, he understands. He's been there. He's been here.

I'm still aspiring to be a better and better person, but I think that disappointments have made me gentler with other people and their disappointments, the stuff that they have to carry around and endure.

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

Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.

The world doesn't grieve when you're grieving. The world goes on about its business. You're having a good day and I'm having a bad one and vice versa. And they could be very good and very bad at the same time. You multiply that by seven billion and you have one element of human experience.

What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.

When you think life is tough, it can get a lot tougher.

For me, I think it's such an important thing to hear other people's stories, because you do find ways that either you can learn something from them, or you can identify with something that they've gone through. You realize that maybe what you're going through in life isn't just specific to you, that somebody else understands it, or you talk to someone and all of sudden you see something in a completely different way because of what they've said to you or shared with you.

People are not so dreadful when you know them. That's what you have to remember! And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are.

We're all human beings, and we all have the same problems. I do remember how blessed I am, and no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.

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.

I wanted to live the inner life of every man I saw, look at the world through his eyes.

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

You have perspective when little people come into your life. You take the best things you have and let them overshadow your disappointment.

Everything's borne out of human experience, of course - rejection, humiliation, poverty, whatever. People aren't born bad, no matter how harsh the circumstances. There is a person in there, and that person is not made of ice.

Possibly because I've lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life.

I've always been interested in how other people live their lives, which is why it's important to engage fully even in painful times. And out of that, I get to laugh.

No matter where you come from, we all share the same struggles as human beings, and my beginning is no different.

You simply can't get inside the heads of other people and say to them, 'Look, I went through some rough times.' It's impossible to explain everything the streets taught me, and that was quite a lot.

I do think that the strongest character is somebody that you can connect with to your personal self, or at least find the humanity in both of you and start from there.

I'm trying to use myself and my own flawedness as a metaphor for general human experience. I'm trying to 'stand next to' a subject, whether it's Bobby Knight or Vince Carter, and use that subject to meditate on both him and me.

I understand how it is to be away from your family for so long, to leave your comfort zone, it's not easy. That's why I've never fallen apart with anyone because I understand their perspective, as well.

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.