Why Books Matter: Why I Write the Way I Do

Long before I ever wrote a book, I found myself paying quiet attention to what books actually do to people. How they soften us. How they steady us. How they help us find words for things we’ve been carrying in silence. A book becomes a companion long before it becomes a memory. And the older I get, the more I understand why.

Across history, books have never been ordinary objects. They have been banned, smuggled, burned, protected, copied in secret, and taught in whispers. People risked their safety to preserve certain pages because those pages preserved something in them—freedom, imagination, the right to question, the permission to hope. When something is fought for that fiercely, we feel its weight even generations later.

That legacy shapes my bond with books. It also shapes why I write.

Books offer a kind of honesty that doesn’t ask for anything in return. They sit beside us in seasons when we feel unseen. They carry truths we weren’t ready to speak out loud. They let us slip quietly into another person’s inner world while still staying rooted in our own. A story, at its best, is an act of recognition—and sometimes an act of liberation.

My writing begins with a simple belief: the right words, offered at the right moment, can shift a life by a few quiet degrees. I don’t write for noise. I write for clarity. For the reader who is ready to listen but hasn’t yet found the language. For the person standing at the edge of a question they can’t fully name. For anyone carrying a story that needs more room to breathe.

The stories you carry shape the life you live.
The stories you share shape the lives around you.

And over time, I’ve learned something else—something that has become the heart of my creative work:
the courage you share becomes the quiet permission someone else has been waiting for.

Courage, especially the quiet kind, travels. It lives inside reflection. It moves through margins and conversations. It grows in the space where one person’s honesty meets another person’s readiness. It reminds us that we’re not navigating our lives alone.

Books are vessels of memory, mirrors of identity, and invitations to begin again. They stay with us long after the last page turns. And if something I write becomes, even for one person, a moment of recognition or a spark of courage—then the story has done its work.

And so have I.

If this reflection resonates with you, you may feel at home in a movement built around the same belief: that stories are meant to travel, not gather dust.

You can learn more, and even release a book of your own, at: opensidewalkproject.org