perspective broadening Quotes

The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before.

Over the last thirty years or so, I have definitely become more enlightened about corners of the social spectrum that I had less exposure to as a young man. I've interacted with more poor people, more minorities and more sexual minorities. As you get more people from different backgrounds involved in your life, you get a broader perspective and you're less cavalier about your opinions.

In this political climate, people are so shut down to other ideas - I call it a hardening of the categories - that if you can get them to open up and laugh, there is a possibility of improvement, and a possibility of change. I think humor sneaks up on people, and before you know it, you're laughing at something you might not agree with.

I always find time to read novels and poetry as well as scripts; I like to enjoy different kinds of storytelling. I spend time at the beach and with my loved ones. I like traveling to unfamiliar places to challenge my perspectives and glean wisdom from other ways of life.

I think it's important to live as much of your life as possible in the real world. If you live a life that's limited to the Westside of Los Angeles, you're only going to see people like you.

Books by women, people of color, LGBTQ authors, differently abled people, and non-Americans are a great way of broadening horizons and building empathy.

I'm revealing information to people. I'm not creating it. And to the extent that people embrace it, I think they're empowered by it, because any time you have a bigger perspective today than you did yesterday, it's got to be only for the good of your mind, your body, your soul.

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.