Scott Simon Quotes

I think that if we don't learn to inhabit other people's perspectives, then we're never going to understand why people do what they do.

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

It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy.

My job is all about getting inside another person's mind and thoughts.

Reading can almost be viewed as empathy training. Movies have better action scenes, sure. But books are uniquely suited to showing you the inside of another person's head. That is the root of empathy. That's the first step to understanding you're not alone in the world.

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

To understand a man is really to be that man.

Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.

Compassion takes imagination.

Put yourself in the other man's place and then you will know why he thinks certain things and does certain deeds.

Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.

You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours.

If you have the power to see things through somebody else's eyes, it's like going from black and white to color or two dimensions to three dimensions.

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.

If you want to study yourself, look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people, look into your own heart.

Go beyond yourself and reach out to other people with a sincere love, respect, caring, and understanding of their needs.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while.

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.

I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.

Books allow you to see the world through the eyes of others.

We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us

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

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