" The Russians, when I found them a few years later, worked on me in the same way. They seemed to regard fiction not as something decorative but as a vital moral-ethical tool. They changed you when you read them, made the world seem to be telling a different, more interesting story, a story in which you might play a meaningful part, and in which you had responsibilities. "

― George Saunders , A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life