Literature for intimacy

One of the reasons I had specialized in literature was a search for intimacy with others, whether characters, authors, or fellow readers who were willing to share what they observed in texts. Through poems, plays, stories, novels, and even nonfiction, I could see what was important to other persons, what they desired and feared, and how they suffered, fell in love, cherished their dreams, survived tragedy and faced death.

Albert Howard Carter III, First Cut: A Season in the Anatomy Lab (New York: Picador USA, 1997), p. 2.