Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening.
Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
What people should do is explain to their friends, to their neighbors how they feel when they confront the word n - - and why they feel the way they feel.
Folks can look at this issue and read it and it can feel like medicine, it can feel epidemic. We wanted this to hit people in their gut, and the hope is that by doing that, we can get more people to think more deeply about these issues.
The idea of faking empathy to take a step forward to understanding - it's a really powerful idea.
We like epic stories, we like adventure, we like epic fights, so if you can mix a great story that can also really teach someone about a different experience, you have the potential to really help people.
It's also one thing to see a celebrity or some kind of character on a TV show being gay. It's a totally different thing when you know your husband... not your husband, but your brother or your friend or the dude you hung out in high school was gay. I mean, that is what changes people's minds, what changes people's minds.
In the beginning war looks and feels like love. But unlike love it gives nothing in return but an ever-deepening dependence, like all narcotics, on the road to self-destruction. It does not affirm but places upon us greater and greater demands. It destroys the outside world until it is hard to live outside war's grip. It takes a higher and higher dose to achieve any thrill. Finally, one ingests war only to remain numb.
In a film, if you can capture what's going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it.
The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.
When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining.
When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.
Listening is a very deep practice. You have to empty yourself. You have to leave space in order to listen especially to people we think are our enemies - the ones we believe are making our situation worse. When you have shown your capacity for listening and understanding, the other person will begin to listen to you, and you have a change to tell him or her of your pain, and it's your turn to be healed. This is the practice of peace.
You don't want to just preach to people; you want to get them emotionally involved, and I think you do that with a wonderful human story about one person's struggle.
Often when someone comes to you and wants to vent, it's so tempting to start giving advice. But if you allow the person just to let the feelings out, and then at another time come back with advice or comments, that person would experience a deeper healing.
If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.
It's an honest place to be if you don't understand someone else's experience, but there's no way for the other to understand if a conversation or an explanation isn't made.
To listen with empathy is the most important human skill.
If we took the time to learn more about different places and people, perhaps we would have more empathy for each other.
Books are personal, passionate. They stir emotions and spark thoughts in a manner all their own, and I'm convinced that the shattered world has less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever smaller part of it.
Writing fiction is a good way to inhabit other minds, if not other lives.
I think women should have insight as to how men think. Just like men should have insight into how women think.
But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized - at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.
We need to make the bullies aware of what they're doing, why it's wrong, and the effects it has on the kids who they are doing it to. You can see the light bulbs going off in these kids' heads when I say this. I try to put them in the situation of those being bullied. It just makes them aware.
