For Miranda's Last Stand, I had just read a biography of Chief Sitting Bull. I was tremendously impressed with Chief Sitting Bull, so he found his way into my book, and really was an important part of that book. There are a lot of people, I know, who say you can't write about these things if you're not a Native American or an African American. But I feel very strongly that that's not true. It seems to me that if we can't understand one another, then our society has very little hope.
Compassion comes from our understanding of one another.
Imagining yourself into the lives of others is really what makes life tolerable. It's what makes us all human. I don't think so. I saw an article in the New York Times a couple of years ago. It was a description of the city of Vrindivan, the city where widows are abandoned by their in-laws.