Etgar Keret Quotes

Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.

Reading will put you into the minds and hearts of others. It might help you understand why other people do what they do sometimes.

We can only know others by ourselves.

I wouldn't claim to know what another person is thinking. I can imagine it, but it's my interpretation, and I try to make that clear. It's my vision of what I think their life is. I don't think there are empirical truths in that regard.

It's hard to put yourself in someone else's head.

I think that if we don't learn to inhabit other people's perspectives, then we're never going to understand why people do what they do.

Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.

It's presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being.

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

It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy.

one never knows really how things are with other people, they just do always seem more spirited than oneself somehow.

My job is all about getting inside another person's mind and thoughts.

I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.

One way to overcome our natural self-centeredness is to try to see things from other people's perspectives.

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.

Compassion takes imagination.

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?

Caring comes from being able to put yourself in the position of the other person.

The best way to break down that fear is to spend time with somebody, put yourself in somebody else's shoes, understand what the other person is going through.

I never had to put myself in somebody else's shoes.

Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes--but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.

Imagine others complexly.