Rebecca Solnit Quotes

Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

Reading and discovering fiction has taught me how to empathise, understand falling in love and all those complex relationships that people have to deal with.

I'm very very happy for my hardships and misfortunes: they build character and make you a better person. Even if I think it's something you have to carry with you, it's definitely something that makes you more empathic towards other people, makes you understand people and relationships so much better.

Being in relationship with others helps us know ourselves better.

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

We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.

We like to pretend that our generous impulses come naturally. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first. It's the reason... we have to get burned before we understand the power of fire; the reason our most meaningful relationships are so often those that continued beyond the very juncture at which they came the closest to ending.

The ability to understand the cause of your own suffering gives you the ability to understand ours.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

A woman not only takes her identity and individuality for granted, but knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love.

It was easier to know a character's point of view than it was to figure out what your point of view was.

Alas, we think of ourselves as unique entities-minds unlike any others-and thus we often reject the lessons that the emotional experience of others has to teach us.

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've never been interested in things that sparkle and shine; I'm more interested in people.

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.

I feel people think I'm almost like a robot - like an android... I just don't really get portrayed as someone who has feelings or who is sympathetic... like a self-absorbed ice queen.

My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.

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 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.

After this whole acting thing is over and done, you eventually have to be human. Some people are never human. It's very weird.

If I want to be a better person for whoever is in my life, I have to learn.

There's only person in the world you can't see - yourself. But, God created - or whoever created us, we don't even have to argue that point - created us so perfect because we can actually see ourselves in other people.

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

In my mind, as long as I did what was right for me, I was cool. But that's not the way it works. You have to think about other people and take their feelings into account.

I always feel that life can teach you how to act. I'm always looking at life through other people's eyes. By feeling empathy. And I do feel that I am constantly learning.