Azar Nafisi Quotes

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

For most of your career, what you're trying to do is to step into other people's shoes.

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

I can't not put myself in the shoes of every person I pass.

I never had to put myself in somebody else's shoes.

In order to get inside their skin, I have to identify with them. That includes even the ones who are complete bastards, nasty, twisted, deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems. Even them. When I get inside their skin and look out through their eyes, I have to feel a certain - if not sympathy, certainly empathy for them. I have to try to perceive the world as they do, and that creates a certain amount of affection.

Anytime you stop and talk to somebody and you learn about them, you start to walk in their shoes a little bit and you see things through a different lens.

It's good to have to put yourself in someone else's skin. It's all-consuming.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

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

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.

It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man.

… people can't imagine someone else's point of view.

My mother always taught me to think about things from other people's perspectives and think about where they're coming from.

It's kind of funny that I've been branded as the empathy lady when, really, what I'm doing is questioning and interrogating empathy.

I think when you're empathetic, you're putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, right? It's not about you.

I learned the most important thing is to put yourself in the shoes of the players.

I will never actually be able to know what it's like to go through life in someone else's body.

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.

Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It's all through our own individual prisms.

How can you build something for someone else if you don't have enough familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?

I do have a bit of empathy I suppose, but it has come more recently as I'm knocking on 30's door and I think I'm getting there.

I am the type of person that likes to put myself in someone's shoes to 'get' it.

I just try to put myself in the minds of all the characters.

A love of reading shows empathy, the desire to understand how others live or act or might act - and why.