David Koechner Quotes

I have a lot of compassion for human beings in life experiences, so I allow myself to feel what these characters are feeling and don't have a problem accepting that.

Actors go inside the heads of other people and are not afraid of the complicated places you can find yourself.

I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.

I am a human being; nothing human can be alien to me.

I think that's an incredible thing that we can do as actors - to feel empathy toward someone that you may otherwise detest, you know?

Taking on different characters and seeing things through the eyes of different people is interesting to me. When I look at what people are going through in life, I try to understand their story.

That's what I love doing - understanding another person's perspective that's really different from mine. To me, it's like an emotional puzzle, trying to figure out the humanity of a character who is very different from myself and why they think the way they do.

I'm interested in everything about what it means to be a human being, so every role is an excuse to delve into a different way of life, a different socio-economic background, and a different tragic or comedic circumstance.

That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.

We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

Like anything, you've gotta find the humanity in the characters.

No person can ever know everything that is in the heart of another. We are all Face Dancers in our souls.

In order to get inside their skin, I have to identify with them. That includes even the ones who are complete bastards, nasty, twisted, deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems. Even them. When I get inside their skin and look out through their eyes, I have to feel a certain - if not sympathy, certainly empathy for them. I have to try to perceive the world as they do, and that creates a certain amount of affection.

Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practise anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity.

We can never truly understand the people we hate; we can never truly hate the people we understand.

Theoretically, the actor ought to be more sound in mind and body than other people, since he learns to understand the psychological problems of human beings when putting his own passions, his loves, fears, and rages to work in the service of the characters he plays. He will learn to face himself, to hide nothing from himself- and to do so takes AN INSATIABLE CURIOSITY ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION

Until we invent telepathy, books are our best choice for understanding the rest of humanity.

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.

Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

After having read a lot of fiction, literature, whatever you want to call it, from Wolfe to Houellebecq, I think you have to have an understanding and insight of the human condition that is informed and motivated by a desire to immerse yourself in the human world and bring these stories to bear.

Two of an actress's greatest assets are love and pain. A great actress, even a good actress, must have plenty of both in her life.

But it's interesting being directed by someone who is a very good actor. There's nothing like it. It might sound like a territorial thing about what I do, but I don't think you can understand what it is until you've done it. I know that to be a fact.

In 30 years of travel and training leaders -164 nations - I've never met anyone who didn't need massive doses of love.