Susan Sarandon Quotes

She has no imagination and that means no compassion.

How can you build something for someone else if you don't have enough familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while.

I would like to think that as a result of not just my own experiences, but at least being empathetic and compassionate about other people's experiences and plights and tragedies, that I am affected by it and learn from it.

Walk a mile in my shoes is good advice. Our children will learn to respect others if they are used to imagining themselves in another's place.

I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.

I don't think you have to have experienced things to understand them.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

When you have a fresh point of view that comes from the right side of the heart, it's just so valuable. You can take it or not take it, but just that perspective can give you a lot of strength or make you reflect on a lot of things.

In addition to giving comfort and joy, art also has the miraculous ability to let us live in other men's skins, to test our perceptions and beliefs against theirs, and perhaps to be changed as a result. It does this by portraying the world creatively, heightening our perception and enriching our understanding of things as they are.

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.

A helpful thing for me has always been - this is from a great acting teacher Declan Donnellan - is this beautiful way of expressing how and why people do things that other people may not do. It's a simple sentence that says, 'I understand you; you don't understand me.'

Changing your attitude from self-centerdness to understanding requires desire and commitment to always try to see things from the other persons point of view.

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.

The man who can put himself in the place of other men, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for him.

Imaginative empathy is one of the great gifts that humans have, and it means that we can live more than one life. We can picture what it would be like from another perspective.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

I think one of my better gifts as a writer is empathy.

Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who's having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another's viewpoint has served me well as a writer.

When you research someone, you actually get beyond your own preconceptions and become aware of the human being other than the image. You become empathetic and sympathetic in turn.

One of the main reasons I write fiction is to try to understand what life is like for people other than myself, to try to see the world through my characters' eyes. I often find that I'm able to understand certain emotional truths about my own life by exploring things from different vantages.

Literature helps us transcend ourselves.