When you read a novel, you are immersing yourself in what it’s like to be inside another person’s head. You are simulating a social situation. You are imagining other people and their experiences in a deep and complex way.

What a relief to know she was out there. These books that are life rafts, these authors who never know exactly what they’re doing for all of us when they’re writing them. I can’t imagine that when they sit down to work on them, they think: Today I will save a life.