Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
“I consider myself a product of Alaska. The love and the debt that I feel to my home state, you always want your hometown to be the proudest of you.”
“If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.”