Garth Stein Quotes

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

Your own pain is involuntary; you feel overwhelmed and have no control. When feeling the pain of others, there is an element of discomfort, but there also is a level of stability because you are voluntarily accepting pain. It gives you a sense of confidence.

I tend to absorb a lot of what other people are feeling.

If they played more blues, people would just get it - they try to hold it back but just about can't hold it back now because the blues is really going.

A woman can tell me about her having a baby, but I'll never know what it is to have a baby.

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

I think that with any emotion - fear, love, nervousness - if the actor's feeling it, then the audience feels it.

Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel.

I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.

There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?

I'll instinctively know that I identify with a character.

Often, if I read a story and I'm moved, I have an understanding for a character and I don't really know why.

People aren't very good at other people's pain.

You can't understand a character intellectually, you have to become one with its emotional core.

When I go onstage, every situation I have to play, I feel pain. When I sing 'Madama Butterfly' I feel completely everything she felt: It's horrible.

Emotional information is very, very rich in influence. You're giving somebody something to connect with, to see themselves in.

I feel and take in people's energy. Sometimes, I feel the pain of other people.

You never really feel somebody's suffering. You only feel their death.

When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

Like we were connected, the echo of his pain twisted inside inside me. his pain, my pain.

Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

Emotions are raised in us, not only by the qualities and actions of others, but also by their feelings. I cannot behold a man in distress, without partaking of his pain; nor in joy, without partaking of his pleasure.