To the Authors that Changed Me,
I have been involved in an intimate love affair with literature from the moment I could read. Books are where I find not only a home, but endless homes. Homes that existed centuries ago, or not at all, or that may exist only in the future. In literature I have been reincarnated many times and lived many lives - some heroic, others romantic, and a few hauntingly tragic.
You, dear author, made all of this possible. Thank you for the adventures and the hero's quests. You opened my eyes to worlds I could never imagined, and to challenges I could never foresee. You inspired courage, compassion, fear, and even love. I hung on your every word, cherished your stories, and held your characters close to my heart.
It is difficult to put into words all that your writing has meant to me. It has changed me over the years, molded me into who I am today. It has been a friend to me at times when friends were scarce. The nights when the world felt dark and scary found me under the covers with a flashlight, my nose buried in a book.
At times you imparted knowledge and history, and on other occasions theory and hypothesis. Sometimes you just told a story for the heck of it. Yet from you I learned that compassion is born from learning to see the world from others' perspectives - and fortunately you taught me how to do that as well. You taught me that courage and chivalry are valuable beyond measure. You reassured me that others feel loneliness, longing, fear, and anger - and that those things can be overcome. You taught me I am not alone, but part of an infinite universe of other people who just as flawed and beautiful.
Your writing has immense power. With a book I can never be caged. When words cast the spell of imagination there is no limit to what we readers can do. When a heart finds that kind of freedom a need for liberty is planted in it - great works like yours have inspired rebellions, civil rights movements, and even kindness.
So dear author, what I'm trying to say is thank you. Your work has been the great love, liberator, and teacher in my life for many years now. I know it could not have been easy for you give the world that piece of your soul, for surely that is what was imparted on those pages. If anyone ever asks me if I believe in magic I will hand them your book.
With Love,
A Proud Book Worm
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
