Alice Hoffman Quotes

It's presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

There is one particular argument that I call our 'ancient war.' If it could be summed up in one phrase, it would be, 'You don't get it. You don't understand what it's like to be me living with you.' There is such truth in that statement. None of us can really appreciate what it is like to be the other person, what that point of view feels like.

I too was a player for many years, I realise there are moments when we all see things differently and cannot judge how someone else thinks.

Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It's all through our own individual prisms.

We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do. We assume that others think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse. This is the biggest assumption that humans make.

You're wrong means that I don't understand you, I'm not seeing what you're seeing- and I'm not seeing all of you there is to see. But there is nothing wrong with you. You are what you need to be, doing what you need to be doing, and although I may take steps to protect myself of others, I do not know all and therefore am literally inadequate to judge.

I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men.

You can disagree with another person's opinions. You can disagree with their doctrines. You can't disagree with their experience.

Too often we judge people based on our own backgrounds and experiences, but when you understand people's stories, it's easier to understand their demeanor.

The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling.

You'll never see it my way, because you're not me!

We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.

And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.

You've seen things through my eyes.

Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place.

Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.

She didn’t judge him or hate him for things that weren’t his fault. She accepted him and that was the greatest miracle of all.

Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.

Never judge a man's actions until you know his motives

When you plan a journey from your mind into mine, remember to allow for the time difference.

Communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak the truth are very silencing of others.

We may not always see eye to eye, but we can try to see heart to heart.

I wanted to finally feel better about understanding. I painted my wife because I wanted to understand her. I can talk to her, but I didn't understand why I was so compelled.