Stevie Smith Quotes

I find people confusing.

For me, storytelling is all about how we learn about each other. I'm so curious about people, what makes them tick, why they are who they are, and how we all relate to each other, despite the fact that we may not think that we do.

Working with different people anyway is like life and meeting different people... as long as you can be empathetic, you can take a bit of them on and see what you can do to help their process. That said, my relationship with Woody Allen was trying to hang on his every word so that I could tell everybody what he said afterwards. But certainly, he was a very good example of somebody who you didn't hear talk above a very low volume for the entire time he was on-set.

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

Unless we give part of ourselves away, unless we can live with other people and understand them and help them, we are missing the most essential part of our own human lives.

It is only with the passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to discover about our own can only be learned from them.

One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees.

This has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone--other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands--but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.

Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.

We feel understood by people who like us; misunderstood by people who don't -- and those feelings are probably realistic.

Other people are like a mirror which reflects back on us the kind of image we cast.

When I'm starting to feel, "How many more people are there?" I go slower. I ask questions, and that person engaging with me gives me energy.

The thing always is to go to where people really are and what they're really feeling about life.

I don't think I can see the world through other people's eyes, but I can capture an attitude or a look that makes others think I can. I have an appreciation for why people choose to look the way they do. But I can't know what they experience.

People behave more on the basis of how they feel than how they think; unless there are good feelings between people, it is almost impossible to reason intelligently.

I don't always understand other people's motives. I will repeat that for my own benefit, if you don't mind. I don't always understand other people's motives.

There is so much to be learned from listening to people's hopes, frustrations, and points of view

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

Understanding people certainly impacts your ability to communicate with others.

The ability to understand people is a choice.

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

I think one of the biggest political failures, and the biggest social failures, over the past few years has been the failure of empathy; not being able to look at the other person down the street.

I'm not in the what-people-feel business. It is not my place to guess.

Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That's why they look alike.

I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.