Helen Garner Quotes

The royal road to a man's heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.

I don't quite know how to put it into words, but I feel for the audience that I have; I know them.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

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.

It sounds cliche, but communication is the number one way to keep a relationship solid.

It's true that misunderstanding and lack of understanding are often themes in my fiction, but I am grateful for the moments when true understanding is achieved, especially between writer and reader. It's miraculous.

When you learn how to be really attentive, you learn the importance of patience and appreciating a woman. You're able to appreciate the softness of her skin and the look in her eyes. It's a connection.

Love is reaching out to try to get to the other person.

Cherish your human connections - your relationships with friends and family.

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.

I believe that if you can discover something of the truth of a person, then you will start to understand, and to understand is to move towards, if not like, then at least an empathy of some kind.

It's so important to keep a marriage alive with small treats and doing little things for each other. Just remembering to say nice things and to have listening time is vital. That ghastly phrase 'quality time' means taking three minutes to sit down and be still with someone rather than yelling over your shoulder as you rush out.

It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.

Whoever said love is blind is dead wrong. Love is the only thing that lets us see each other with the remotest accuracy.

Value your friendship. Value your relationships.

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.

I have always worked from that place, that if you are going to inhabit someone and get under their eyes, you need to have empathy.

I think that good storytelling of any kind does promote a humility in that it encourages you to see the world the way that other people see it.

When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encyclopedia of Human Experience.' The stories I hear help me expand my definition of what love is, what pain feels like, what sacrifice means, what laughter can do.

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you.