Marcel Proust Quotes

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.

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

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

All art to me is an empathetic act. Whoever's telling a story is trying to transfer emotion into someone else.

It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel.

In addition to giving comfort and joy, art also has the miraculous ability to let us live in other men's skins, to test our perceptions and beliefs against theirs, and perhaps to be changed as a result. It does this by portraying the world creatively, heightening our perception and enriching our understanding of things as they are.

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

I think art breaks down otherness.

I feel like the world would be a better place if more people experienced a little bit of someone else's experience.

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

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

A helpful thing for me has always been - this is from a great acting teacher Declan Donnellan - is this beautiful way of expressing how and why people do things that other people may not do. It's a simple sentence that says, 'I understand you; you don't understand me.'

We will always need to be reminded that we are human. Art gives us that.

Literally, no man ever sees himself as others see him. No photograph or reflection ever gives us the same slant on ourselves that others see. It has often been proved on the witness stand that no two people ever see the same accident precisely the same way. We see through different eyes and from different angles. But if we could see things as other people see them, we could come closer to knowing why they do what they do and why they say what they say.

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.

Imagination has to do with one's awareness of the reality of other people as well as of one's own reality. Imagination is a bridge between the provincialism of the self and the great world.

A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.

I see myself as a witness to humanity.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.

The more I've learned about me, the more I'm interested in others.

I think most people try to get others to see through their eyes.

We must develop a deeper interest and greater understanding of the people we meet here or abroad. Like us, they are passengers on board that mysterious ship called life.

We can learn the art of fierce compassion - redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking - while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations.