Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature fosters empathy by allowing readers to experience different perspectives, which can shape their behavior towards others.
This quote by Barbara Kingsolver highlights the transformative power of literature in developing empathy. When readers engage with literary works, they are drawn into the experiences and thoughts of characters, living vicariously through different lives. This immersion can significantly influence how they perceive and relate to other people, fostering greater understanding and compassion in their interactions.
Themes
LiteratureEmpathyPerspectiveBehaviorPsychologyUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a literary discussion to emphasize the importance of reading for developing empathy.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes βChildren can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
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I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
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Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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When I read interviews with people like Kevin Barry or Colin Barrett, who I hugely admire, they don't really seem to come up against the question of likeability even though their characters, in some instances, are really horrible.
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The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
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I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway
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Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
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If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
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