In the Company of Silence

Art on the walls at the Saint Helena Public Library

“The doors of wisdom are never shut.”— Benjamin Franklin

When I walked into the Saint Helena Library, my whole body let go. The quiet met me at the door, wrapped around me, and reminded me who I am when the noise of the world is stripped away. That’s always been the gift of libraries for me. They steady me. They’re sacred spaces of the mind where the chaos outside has no power.

I’ve known this feeling since I was a kid. I grew up in Brooklyn, not far from the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch at Grand Army Plaza. That building was my first encounter with the majesty of silence. I remember walking with my cousins down the noisy 1100 block of President Street, between Nostrand and Rogers. We laughed, we shouted, we joined the block’s constant banter. But when we reached the library’s bronze doors, past those tall stone columns, everything changed. The air grew still. Light spilled through the multicolored glass mosaics, scattering colors across the floor. It was like stepping into another world, one that invited me into the life of the mind.

A statue of a woman in the market place at the Saint Helena Public Library.

And in that silence, I found company in books. I carried home Cynthia Voigt’s Dicey’s Song and learned what resilience looked like. Judy Blume’s Blubber forced me to wrestle with cruelty and empathy. Alice Walker’s The Color Purpleshowed me survival and love, and the power of speaking in your own voice. Those stories kept me close, even when the world felt too far.

The hush I felt as a girl came back to me at Saint Helena today. And I am grateful—grateful that this administration, with all of its changes and executive orders that seem to come every four hours, has left our libraries intact. The silence I stepped into was not an accident. It was preserved.

Here in Beaufort County, the library’s Code of Conduct is clear: disruptive noise—loud talking, shouting, banging on furniture—isn’t allowed. If you don’t honor the hush, you can be asked to leave. That’s how seriously the library protects the peace inside its walls. And beyond the doors, local ordinances back it up, recognizing libraries as noise-sensitive spaces, places where quiet isn’t just a wish but a right.

Libraries have always been this way. Franklin knew it when he started the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731, to make books available when they were scarce and expensive. He believed in “mutual improvement,” that shared knowledge could lift us all. That’s what libraries still are—spaces of democracy, of memory, of dreaming.

And that is why they matter so deeply. Even as administrations rise and fall, even as shelves are tested and certain books are pulled away, the library endures. It belongs to the people. It always has.

Books may be under attack. Stories may be chipped away. But walk into a library, and you remember: silence itself is a form of power. In that hush, we find our footing. In that hush, we resist.

I sat in the Saint Helena Library today, grateful for the stillness, and the memory of Brooklyn returned to me—the mosaics casting colored light on the stone floors, the hush that taught me how to listen inward. The mosaics are still with me, shining quietly, even here in South Carolina. That is the power of a library: once you enter its silence, it never leaves you. The doors of wisdom are still open.