 
Empathy doesn't come
naturally to us.
Like I have a three
year - old child
and he is terrible at
empathizing with my needs.
It - you know, we learn
empathy through story
and we learn it through
people coming into our lives
and saying stop for a
second and think about what
it is like to be someone
else in this situation.
Stop and try to imagine that
person's life for a moment.
And I think that story is
a really important part
of that for me.
I mean, that - it was
often through novels
that I was able to live
the lives of other people.
I mean the difficulty
of being a human
is I'm only going to see
life out of my eyes, right?
Like I'm never going to have
a mind other than my own.
I'm never gonna
understand what it's
like to be anyone else
really in the same way
that I understand what
it's like to be myself.
But the magic of
reading books is
that they allow
you, for a while,
to live inside of someone else.
They allow you to become Holden
Caulfield or Anne of Green
Gables or whoever it is.
And through that, that's when
you begin to understand it.
Wow, other people are really
people and I need to, you know,
respect them and treat
them as, you know,
as I would want
them to treat me.
 
