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8c3d9c2
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You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
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Ray Bradbury |
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0e4d86a
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I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.
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individuality
science-fiction
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Ray Bradbury |
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a77c0c6
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Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?" "Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you."
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relationships
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Ray Bradbury |
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f053402
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Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
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Ray Bradbury |
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eb07af8
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Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you tou..
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legacy
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Ray Bradbury |
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feb0e4f
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We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?
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Ray Bradbury |
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2b0f782
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If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
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inspirational
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Ray Bradbury |
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16f6564
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There must be something in books, something we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing.
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censorship
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Ray Bradbury |
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67ebe3b
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Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.
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Ray Bradbury |
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3681145
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If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.
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Ray Bradbury |
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8a9f204
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With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.
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Ray Bradbury |
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f7ef284
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I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.
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Ray Bradbury |
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34b1fff
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We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
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kindness
heart
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Ray Bradbury |
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0c41f8c
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Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things.
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inspirational
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Ray Bradbury |
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fd5e507
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The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
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writing
skill
quality
writers
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Ray Bradbury |
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13e9b70
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The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.
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universe
magic
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Ray Bradbury |
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fe24670
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But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.
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lying
truth
willful-ignorance
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Ray Bradbury |
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135ea7c
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The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in..
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Ray Bradbury |
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cb53a32
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And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was ..
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Ray Bradbury |
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d1e3542
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It was a pleasure to burn.
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opening-lines
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Ray Bradbury |
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c547786
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A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?
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Ray Bradbury |
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c087b9d
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Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. Bu..
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loneliness
lies
conform
wandering
antisocial
social
peer-pressure
hurt
society
bullying
school
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Ray Bradbury |
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bbe7bf3
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A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.
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Ray Bradbury |
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b6ae32e
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If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iow..
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war
politics
change
happiness
philosophy
contests
data
popular
brilliance
taxation
information
motion
questioning
worry
facts
government
peace
ignorance
thinking
forget
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Ray Bradbury |
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edf3602
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I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.
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ray-bradbury
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Ray Bradbury |
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5ecfc23
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Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.
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bradbury
summer
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Ray Bradbury |
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e33711b
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I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry. Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it's just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.
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sleep
rain
sadness
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Ray Bradbury |
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4eb8f14
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Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
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inspirational
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Ray Bradbury |
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6741d1c
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Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen.
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minorities
diversity
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Ray Bradbury |
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ce88092
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It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
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inspirational
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Ray Bradbury |
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f56fd3e
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First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.
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inspirational
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Ray Bradbury |
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e5a896e
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See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.
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travel
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Ray Bradbury |
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72dc345
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You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios, and televisors, but are not. No,no it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictu..
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magic
love
fahrenheit-451
knowledge
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Ray Bradbury |
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823d2f4
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I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.
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Ray Bradbury |
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2aa0a77
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Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me, I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.
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Ray Bradbury |
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76ad619
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That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.
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risks
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Ray Bradbury |
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8951e18
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A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know.
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Ray Bradbury |
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5a99865
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The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
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Ray Bradbury |
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cc36ff4
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We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.
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Ray Bradbury |
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8432133
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Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.
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Ray Bradbury |
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995d1ae
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Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that . Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.
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Ray Bradbury |
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da7c425
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We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.
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war
history
books
burial
history-repeating-itself
winning
generations
remember
lonely
grave
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Ray Bradbury |
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61ea4f7
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Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.
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Ray Bradbury |
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00ea91d
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That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.
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Ray Bradbury |