David Farr Quotes

Good listeners have a huge advantage. For one, when they engage in conversation, they make people 'feel' heard. They 'feel' that someone really understands their wants, needs and desires. And for good reason; a good listener does care to understand.

Connecting with Canadians isn't about what you say, it's about what you're listening to. It's about what you understand.

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.

I can spend 10 to 15 minutes with someone, and they can tell me what they're going through. I may never have gone through that, but I get it on a really deep level.

I don't get controversial, I don't get political and I don't tell you what to do with your life. I just go out there and tell some stories, and people can relate.

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

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

If I have any talent, I think I have an ability to listen to people and also just meet them on their level.

Everybody's in a situation; everybody has a story. It's about finding out why.

When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. . . . When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.

For me, I think it's such an important thing to hear other people's stories, because you do find ways that either you can learn something from them, or you can identify with something that they've gone through. You realize that maybe what you're going through in life isn't just specific to you, that somebody else understands it, or you talk to someone and all of sudden you see something in a completely different way because of what they've said to you or shared with you.

People will feel safer around you and speak truthfully to you when they feel you are listening intently to them.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

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.

Storytelling is about listening in any media.

But you can't show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture. You've got to show what it's really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds.

I like telling stories of imperfect people because most people are imperfect.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.

If after you read something, you connect with it, you want to do it.

One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.

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.

As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own, ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things.

Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defences and all our differences.

My job is to listen and to ask questions and to be respectful and win the trust of my subjects so that I can work my way into their memories and their point of view.

I love meeting new people; I think everyone has a story to tell. We should all listen sometimes.