It does not just happen. It is disclosed by science that practically one-half of trained intellectual resources are being mobilized for murderous purposes.
That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.
Bad things do happen how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness immobilized by the gravity of my loss or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.
I tell my students it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see who's very far away who's a different color who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.