Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

I've found that the common humanity of people is the most relatable thing, and even if your stories are very specific about a different place, if you have a relatable core of humanity, people will go along with it.

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.

I chose to present myself as one who comes from among the people, and I can be touched by their pain because I have my own.

I love relatable stories.

You rehear your life by reading about what happens to other people.

I love stories about people that, whatever situation they're in, you can relate to them in a way.

Well, I was a big fan of the book and therein a huge fan of the girl Precious. And so I felt like I knew this girl. I felt like I'd grown up alongside her. I felt like she was in my family. She was my friend and she was like people I didn't want to be friends with.

For me, photography is not just about exposing film, it's about exposing the viewer to something new, a place they haven't gone before, but most importantly, to people that they might be afraid of.

Audiences want to feel represented, want to be able to empathize with the characters and the stories they are seeing on the screen.

When a story is told really well and is real, even if it's not about their own lives, people can apply it to themselves.

As a filmmaker, you're looking to reveal something. When other people relate to it, it makes an otherwise lonely world a little less lonely.

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

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

I just always want to play people. I don't want it to be necessarily that you relate to the character as female or male, but that you relate to them as a person. That's the driving force.

That's the power of film. If it's good, it can somehow make you feel connected to even the farthest thing from your own experience.

I love that idea that if you know someone's story, it's impossible not to love them. This is potentially hokey but incredibly true, as far as I'm concerned.

When you relate to a disease, you're afraid. When you relate to a person, there is compassion. You see someone that is like you, that could be like you. You can see yourself in that same situation.

I'm writing my story so that others might see fragments of themselves.

Why would anybody connect to someone who has everything going for them? It's the person who has faults that people want to connect to. So people identify with certain insecurities on stage and just by me talking about my diabetes people come up to me after the show and tell me "Gabe, my blood sugar is out of control and I feel you". That's the first thing they say, they say "I feel you!".

I love storytelling. I love stories, and I love the way in which we connect through stories.

If you put your personal stories out there people always connect.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

I think everybody wants to connect. There is nothing worse than feeling disconnected. And stories that really move people and make people care are the ones where they feel some sort of connection.

I think you have to have a personal connection, and that's what I am always looking to try to create: a personal way in to a story.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.