PHILLIP LOPATE: Because literature is a great pleasure, and it trains you to accept complexity. So when you're in situations that are calling forth ambivalence, if you've read enough literature, you won't be thrown by them, you know? And the same reason why we listen to great music or why we go to museums to look at great paintings.
So I think that it makes one sophisticated, worldly, cosmopolitan, and also able to get some perspective on one's own times. When you realize that this stuff has been going on for a long time, it's not just your period, you'll feel less and less self-pity, and you'll get more of a sense of perspective.