We have a lot to learn from [bonobos], because they're a very egalitarian society and they're a very empathetic society. Sexual behavior is not confined to one aspect of their life that they set aside. It permeates their entire life.
As a musician and a songwriter it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.
What President Obama has done so masterfully of late is to say, in so many words, "I'm signing this executive order permitting federal funding for stem cell research, but I realize that many good, moral people are opposed to this, and I don't take that lightly." I think we can be more civil and empathetic in our discussions of public policy, and I hope my book can be a contribution to that tone.
Our painful experiences strengthen us in becoming more empathetic, more caring, and deeper human beings. We grow in depth of understanding, with greater appreciation for the miracle of life.
One of the few times I'm hit emotionally is when I listen to the tapes sadists make of torturing their victims. There the person is currently suffering, you can hear them suffer, and that calls out for an empathic response. But when they're dead, when they're no longer suffering, when it's over, it's hard to feel empathetic for the corpse.
There's more empathetic representations than we're used to seeing. I honestly feel like in the early days of Hollywood, women did have those. Women had very traditional roles in society of wife and mother, but when they went to the movies, they got to see women be, like, really cool, amazing characters and femme fatales and all of this. And then there was just this systemic reaction where it was all about, "How do we make money?" And everybody wants to sell things to boys. And then women's entertainment became devalued in a way that I think is disrespectful and hurtful.
I've become more empathetic, and my capacity to understand and be patient - to give people a break - has enlarged over the years.
I was trained professionally to connect with people as a therapist. That's job number one, having a empathetic regard towards someone who is sitting right across from you. Being able to pull whatever their needs are, their desires and the things that are troubling them and being able to address that in some way.
The job of the art is to really convey and support that empathetic response. I always try to find where the character is mushy, and then bring that to the forefront.
Maybe that's partly why I'm an actor, I'm a fairly empathetic, emotional person, so I get very, very involved when it's really, really great when I'm watching - so it takes me a second to click back into reality again.
To close the empathetic gap, you really want to get the person emotionally identifying [with your subject and characters], and then when you do that, then you want sneak in a lesson about history and about politics and whatever else you might think about.
I feel like one of the things I'm trying most to do is stretch my empathetic reach, as far as it will go. I got as far as Gilles de Rais' assistant, for example, and not really as far as de Rais himself.
I think fiction is all about the exercise of the empathetic imagination. Part of what I do is let the stuff I read about meld with what I have experienced.
When it comes to social issues, Republicans dont just need to be more empathetic. They also need to be more emphatic in explaining to voters what they believe, and why.
I started writing a novel from the monster's point of view. It has its own difficulties but, I'm ashamed to say, it's much easier writing from a psychopath's point of view than from that of their empathetic opposite.
Having been in front of the camera just a couple of times, I'm empathetic, because it's very disconcerting. Someone shuffles you off to the trailer; you sit there for eleven hours wondering what the hell's going on.
And as such, we need to be empathetic and understanding.
We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.
Hillary Clinton's not seen as empathetic and compassionate.
That's really the essence of what any fiction writer does. Some of it is research-based, but most of it is a really long-term, imaginative, empathetic effort to see the world the way someone whose experiences remote from yours might see it. Not every writer works that way; some writers make a wonderful career out of writing books that adhere very closely to how they view the world. The further I go with this, the more interested I get in trying to imagine my way into other perspectives that at first seem foreign to me.
Working with different people anyway is like life and meeting different people... as long as you can be empathetic, you can take a bit of them on and see what you can do to help their process. That said, my relationship with Woody Allen was trying to hang on his every word so that I could tell everybody what he said afterwards. But certainly, he was a very good example of somebody who you didn't hear talk above a very low volume for the entire time he was on-set.
The most influential person in the room isn't the one who is being a bully, talking loudly, and imposing him- or herself on others. Surrendered people understand that true power comes from being respectful and listening. Surrendered people know themselves and are empathetic toward others. They don't measure themselves by how much they are liked, nor do they compete for attention. When they sit quietly in a room, others always seem to come to them.
At the core, I am an actress. And I think, in a way, that's a good thing in that I am, I think, empathetic and sympathetic to the film. I would never pretend to have the discerning and acute critical eye that a lot of the great critics in our business do have. I don't look at it as being a critic or placing a judgment on a film, and I do think, how do you decide which film is best anyway? It's always a little bit of a mixed bag. But, I think it is just a collective group of people coming together to honor the work of an artist - that's how I think of it.
A more detailed world is a more complicated and complex one, and therefore a more empathetic one. I feel Gord's Downie lyrics are exceptionally empathetic, or that's what they accomplish. The fact that they can cross all those cultural cliques and boundaries really amplifies that, to me.
I flattered myself that I was rather empathetic, that I had rather good imaginative empathy. I've realized now that that was a complete self-delusion and that I didn't really have any comprehension of what it was like to see your entire life go catastrophically wrong in a matter of moments.
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