You go to some of these inner city places and it's so sad when you look at the crime. You have people - and I've seen this, and I've sort of witnessed it - in fact, in two cases I have actually witnessed it. They lock themselves into apartments, petrified to even leave, in the middle of the day.
The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.