Because of empathy, stories of the suffering of one person could lead us into a war that could kill millions of people.

It would be nice if everybody who had something interesting to say about my work could say it politely and civilly, but it doesn't work that way... Sometimes people are just really nasty.

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

When you start writing things to try to persuade someone who's not already part of your guild or your profession that something is interesting, it forces you to ask yourself, "Well, why is this interesting?"

Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care.

I'm really interested in the pleasure we get from stories and the pleasure we get from movies, and certainly the pleasure we get from virtual experiences. My complaint is against empathy as a moral guide. But as a source of pleasure, it can't be beat.

I think there's some evidence that we're empathic by nature. There is some evidence from studies of babies and young children that they resonate with the pain of others, and there's some work by Frans de Waal that other primates also resonate with the pain of others.