Chinua Achebe Quotes

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.

When a story is told really well and is real, even if it's not about their own lives, people can apply it to themselves.

Empathy is not as complicated when you have some aspects in common with your character; it's not impossible to know someone who's like you in many ways but different in one. This is true especially if you are a reader. Reading makes you accustomed to inhabiting other lives and sensibilities.

I love relatable stories.

I just think that good stories are stories that reflect ourselves back at us and each other.

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

The great thing about fiction is you can talk about things without being didactic about them, but hopefully forge a connection with people and an understanding about a shared humanity that tells its own story.

Stories appeal to humanity.

Love stories should be relatable.

Even though I was super personal with 'American Teen,' I want to tap in and not just tell my own stories but tell the stories of other people - so that I can help as many people as possible.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

I've found that the common humanity of people is the most relatable thing, and even if your stories are very specific about a different place, if you have a relatable core of humanity, people will go along with it.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

The great thing about a song is that no one has to know your story. But if you tell it in a way that has clarity and means something to somebody else, then it can apply to their story.

The Big Chill is one of those things that everybody can identify with. Between eight characters, they can pick somebody who's somewhat like them.

You rehear your life by reading about what happens to other people.

Depending on the story that you're telling, you can be relatable to everybody or nobody. I try and tell everybody's story.

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.

The name 'Reflect It Back' comes from the idea of not only giving back but also seeing yourself in someone else.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Audiences want to feel represented, want to be able to empathize with the characters and the stories they are seeing on the screen.

With every character, the first thing I want to feel is empathy.

I'm hoping that the legacy of 'Girlfriends' is just that you can enjoy and connect to Joan, Maya, Toni, Lynn, and William and see your humanity reflected in theirs. That's what I'm hoping that it did.

That's the power of fiction, that it can take the collective and make it personal.

I don't believe people are interested in dates and facts. I don't think it is interesting to say what it is to be this person or that, but I do believe it is entertaining and perhaps even of value to express how it is to be that person.