“What does writing have to do with peace?  Writing as the placing of words on surfaces – clay, stone, papyrus, vellum, paper – not much. Early writing was used to record inventories and to praise rulers, but not to encourage peace.

But fiction writing is different. If the fiction presents its characters in the round – what they think, what they feel, who they love and fear – it’s impossible not to realize that those being read about are as human as those doing the reading. And if the characters are from other places or other cultures, it becomes less and less possible to dismiss such people as not like us and therefore not our fellow mortals.

Writers are limited in their range – in what they are able to write about – whereas readers are not. Readers can read across the whole sweep of human experience – as far back in the past as they can see, as far afield as they can reach, as far into the future as it is possible to imagine. The closer we are to a person, the psychiatrists tell us, the harder it is to actually murder them. Perhaps that is the way in which reading is conducive to peace: it brings us closer together. If I feel I know you, understand you, and like you, why would I wish to make war on you?

That, at any rate, is our hope. We could certainly use a little hope, right about now. “

— Margaret Atwood