Lucia

“Forgive me, Liebchen. What I have said earlier is a lie. There's no such thing as "just" a story. A story is a form of magic. It changes you from the inside and you are never the same after. Once you know about other lives. So it's no wonder that King Aldred insisted on burning the books. People hurled entire libraries. Philosophy, poetry. Fables and fairy tales. Martyrs, those books. They shrieked as their pages blackened and curled. But the ideas inside them would not burn. Aided by sympathetic wind, the remnants rose up. They pressed themselves against woolen coats and stuck fast, shinning out like singed medals until the curious peeled them off and read each rebellion aloud— "calumny", "serendipitous", "justice", "prevail"— and the spell took hold. No. You cannot kill what lives inside of books.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars