There is a profound belonging and community, an unbreakable bond, between a writer and a reader that resides in that creation we call a book.  A book is a place of communion.  A book is a place of encounter.  A book is where a dead word is resurrected and becomes a living thing, as alive as any tree, as cleansing as any river, as open as any piece of lovely sky.  A writer pours out his grief, his wounds, his pain, his darkest hours, his wondrous moments of joy onto the page—and the reader stops to drink of those waters.  Though the writer may have cried bitter tears in the making of a book, there will always be a reader who tastes the sweetness of humanity in the words she reads. Benjamin Alire Sáenz