Jesse Ball Quotes

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.

Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.

As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.

I've learnt that the world over, everyone's essentially the same. We are all trying to have a nice time and get along with things.

No one is ever really a stranger. We cling to the belief that we share nothing with certain people. It's rubbish. We have almost everything in common with everyone.

I'm just like everyone. I like to feel togetherness with someone.

One of the things novels should do is shine a light on those parts of us that are common, the fibres that connect all of us. They should convey the sense that we're all connected, coming from the same tree, sharing common roots.

We're so complex; we're mysteries to ourselves; we're difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we're all the same.

The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.

There's a universal inside of me. So if I tell my story, you're going to see parts of your story in it. I don't know which parts, but we all overlap. We're all very much alike.

Whatever the reason is, I am happiest when connecting with the human experience. It lets me know that I'm not alone in this world.

There is a stage with people we love when we are no longer separate from them, but so close in sympathy that we live through them as directly as through ourselves. ... we push back our hair because theirs is in their eyes.

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

The best moments any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel-cage of being me into the landscape of being us.

Things that feel super personal actually feel really universal. It's sort of the more you really identify something specific within yourself, the more people connect to it because ultimately we are all connected in some way.

What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.

By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.

They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.

...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the primary center of consciousness just as I do. That fact alone...Well, that fact alone is staggering.

It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.

I am because we are. We all bleed the same color. We all want to love and be loved.

The important thing is being capable of emotions, but to experience only one's own would be a sorry limitation.

‎When you meet anyone, treat the event as a holy encounter. It's through others that we either find or love our self. For you see, nothing is accomplished without others. When you eliminate the concept of separation from your thoughts and your behavior, you begin to feel your connection to everything and everyone.