"The amount of horror one used to hear about in one village could be quite extreme. But one might not have heard about all the other villages' horrors at the same time"

Sharon Olds' quote highlights the fact that we often only become aware of the scaries that occur in our immediate surroundings or neighborhoods. It suggests that the level of the atrocities experienced by people in other villages may be far higher, but we are not always knowledgeable about them. This statement might be applied to a variety of situations, from instances of violence to the global inequalities that exist. It encourages us to widen our viewpoints and acknowledge the broader issues that are happening beyond our instant environments, rather than being limited by our own experiences and perspectives.