To my wonderful friends,

There's a lot I want to tell you, but I will never be even half as eloquent as you. Nevertheless, I need to try to express my gratitude for all of the joy and emotional rollercoasters you've brought into my life.

First, thank you for welcoming me with open arms – any time of day (or night), even when I've ignored you for much longer than you deserve. I know I should pay you more attention, and the fact that I sometimes don't is entirely my fault – not yours. You're unpredictable, always changing and offering something new and exciting. You thrill me by the way you play with my heart, making me emotionally attached to people and places and events that may have never even happened. But fictional or not, the treasures within your pages allow me to fully feel – to feel more human than I sometimes do in real life, to laugh and love and despair and experience the full range of human emotions.

Thank you for being my refuge when reality became too tough, and for taking me to places I've never seen, even in photos. The pictures you paint with words more than compensate for your lack of visual aids, creating images in my mind that are simultaneously concrete and open to my own interpretation. Sometimes, I just want to escape into your stories and characters and landscapes and enchanting, poetic way with words; but at the same time, you always seem to offer tidbits of truth that apply to my own situation in the real world, and you do so in such a way that both sobers and inspires me to make a difference. In you, I find both freedom from harsh reality and the encouragement to help fix whatever's wrong with reality. And that is a beautiful thing.

Perhaps what I love most about you is that you're full of contradictions. You can fill my heart with so much joy, but crush it to pieces in the next moment and move me to (literal) tears – yes, I'm looking at you, "The Return of the King." You offer well-defined descriptions of people and places, but you also give me the freedom to fill in the gaps with my own imagination. I can appreciate you both for how beautiful and enchanting you are at a mere cursory glance, but I also find joy in picking you apart for analysis. While oftentimes you inspire me to create something as stunning and emotionally gripping as you, you may also make me doubt my own abilities to ever accomplish such a feat.

However, my doubt is really just a lack of confidence in myself – it's not your fault at all. You may look like just words on a page, but you know how to engage all of my senses and emotions. You make my own behavior contradictory – I'm always eager to press on and find out what happens next, but then I'm crushed when I've actually finished and realize there's nothing left. I love you both for your external appearance – your glossy covers and intricate detailing on the spine and your familiar, well-loved smell – but I also love the treasures you offer within.

There's more I could say, but I could never do so in full. The things you make me feel aren't fully expressible in words – a funny thing since words are what you're made of. And yet sometimes, words are insufficient. And I think that's the best quality about you – you are full of words, yes, but what you make me think and feel goes far beyond the words on the page. And for that, I am forever grateful.