Words on Fire

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

If my language was forbidden, then my name was forbidden. Which meant I had no name. Which left me perfectly free to do everything I could to defy the Russian occupiers.

“Just because it’s a law does not make it right.

So true. If we blindly follow laws others impose, we are no more than mindless automatons.

“It’s not just wishing, Audra. This is a book of ideas. Someone thought the idea and put it into words on paper. That became a seed, and every time someone reads those words, the seed is planted in their mind, too, and it grows and spreads and soon that tiny seed of an idea becomes belief, and belief becomes a plan, and those plans begin to change the world. Control the books and you will control the people.”