Literature makes one sensitive, sensitive to people, to their dreams and to their ideas.

The remark frames literature as an education of empathy and imagination. By entering other minds—through characters, narrators, and poetic voices—readers practice attentiveness to the inner lives of real people: their aspirations (“dreams”) and the beliefs or arguments (“ideas”) that shape them. The repetition of “sensitive” emphasizes that this is not merely intellectual refinement but an emotional and ethical sharpening of perception. Implicitly, the quote also defends literature’s social value: reading is presented as a way to become more humane, better able to recognize complexity in others rather than reducing them to stereotypes or roles.