“To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table.”

“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”

“We invalidate and desensitize our children when we try to make them feel better instead of helping them to feel like it is valid and ok to feel exactly how they feel. We do an immense disservice when we teach them by doing this to resist their own negative emotions. Anything we resist persists, and so we trap our children in their negative emotions when we try to help them avoid negative emotion by showing them how to run in the direction of positive emotion. We need to validate (mirror) their feelings and allow them to befriend the way they feel entirely before any action is taken to improve a situation or the way they feel.”

“It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.”

“We are creatures, not only of the mind, but of feelings and emotions as well. Indeed, feelings and emotions are more fundamental to our being than pure logic and reasoning.”

“Never be ashamed of how you feel. If you feel shame because of how you feel, it means you have been judged by others and told that your feelings were wrong or bad. But the reality is you wouldn't be feeling them if there wasn't a very valid reason to be feeling them. Your feelings are valid. If you feel an emotion, there is a good reason that you are feeling that emotion. Don't let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn't feel.”

“I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it.”

“You could not tell a story like this. A story like this you could only feel.”

“Often, I get the feeling that the story is really happening somewhere and all I'm doing is trying to work out the best way to tell it.”

“Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.”