Some books stay with us forever. It’s because they’re more than just stories. They’re the stories that made us who we are. The characters shaped us, their decisions influenced ours, we fell in and out of love with them, we felt their pain and laughed for their joy. We went on the adventures. We were the true companions, the true friends, that they were never aware of having. Their stories implicate our everyday life in ways no one could have imagined. Because of them perhaps we are a bit kinder, a bit braver, a bit more than we ever could have hoped for. They taught us the meaning of loyalty and true courage. Through them we learned of such innocence that we rejoiced in it, and through them we grew quite as we watched that innocence lost. There was such beauty presented in gentle hands yet at the same time such vile wretchedness that we accepted the small wonderments and mirth given to our characters as delicate presents in fragile casings. We saw heroes at their worst and villains at their best. We learned no one is a devil in their own mind. And when our hero died, with honor or treachery, a little piece of us died, too. So don’t you dare tell me that these are just stories told to children before bed. These are what we are. And we are the most astonishing adventures that you’ll ever know.