The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer.

What I mean by "empathy" is putting yourself in other people's shoes, feeling what they feel.

I love teaching. I wouldn't take a job that didn't include it.

I have two teenage sons, and they're both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they're always on social media.

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.

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

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.