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8dcc88d
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Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.
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Ray Bradbury |
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d1b93f1
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The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sa..
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slavery
greed
sweat
nightmares
horror
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Ray Bradbury |
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0090be5
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Suddenly the day was gone, night came out from under each tree and spread.
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Ray Bradbury |
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d6a4004
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Can't you recognize the human in the inhuman?
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Ray Bradbury |
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84e7789
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And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine. Peer through it at the wintry day - the snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, color sky from iron to blue. Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in..
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summer-in-winter
summertime
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Ray Bradbury |
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7639cca
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Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
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philosophy
information
news
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Ray Bradbury |
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c16a08e
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holding a book but reading the empty spaces.
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reading
something-wicked-this-way-comes
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Ray Bradbury |
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6198058
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Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.
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writing-life
writing-craft
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Ray Bradbury |
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e037df9
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Thinking little at all about nothing in particular.
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Ray Bradbury |
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1c6f3a2
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And me not sleeping tonight or tomorrow night or any night for a long while, now that this has started. And he thought of her lying on the bed with the two technicians standing straight over her, not bent with concern, but only standing straight, arms folded. And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very..
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Ray Bradbury |
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6b417c3
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He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring. But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There would be no spring. ("The October Game")"
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october
halloween
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Ray Bradbury |
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d39785d
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Why live? Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of more life and the living of as good a life as possible.
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Ray Bradbury |
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d644002
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Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt
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Ray Bradbury |
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79bdcef
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And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.
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Ray Bradbury |
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8ca6eb7
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I've always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It's essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intelle..
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Ray Bradbury |
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b86636d
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But no man's a hero to himself.
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inspirations
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Ray Bradbury |
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58004ae
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Do you ever read any of the books you burn?" He laughed. "That's against the law!" "Oh. Of course."
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Ray Bradbury |
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f4478b0
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Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes in the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. Shared and ..
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Ray Bradbury |
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ead76c8
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It's poor judgment', said Grandpa 'to call anything by a name. We don't know what a hobgoblin or a vampire or a troll is. Could be lots of things. You can't heave them into categories with labels and say they'll act one way or another. That'd be silly. They're people. People who do things. Yes, that's the way to put it. People who *do* things.
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names
supernatural
monsters
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Ray Bradbury |
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bb9d022
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To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes.
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Ray Bradbury |
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234a0d0
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Every time you take a step, even when you don't want to. . . . When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that's good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move.
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life
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Ray Bradbury |
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a9d0f90
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Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.
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Ray Bradbury |
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a7b1bde
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No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn't want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden undernea..
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Ray Bradbury |
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6d5e09c
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Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before...It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along..
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Ray Bradbury |
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9a20cac
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Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.
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reading
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Ray Bradbury |
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021dadc
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Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.
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public-opinion
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Ray Bradbury |
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0c882ae
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A Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time," she said. "I was born out of New York. The things that are most wrong here summoned me. ("Drink Entire: Against The Madness Of Crowds")"
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witches
witch
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Ray Bradbury |
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8f526c3
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You're insane!" "I won't argue that point."
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insanity
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Ray Bradbury |
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ed3b8c1
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Ignorance is fatal.
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death
wisdom
ray
fatal
ignorance
knowledge
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Ray Bradbury |
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cf07378
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Tom," said Douglas, "just promise me one thing, okay?" "It's a promise. What?" "You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right?" "You mean you'll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes?" "Well . . . sure . . . even that. What I mean is, don't go away, huh? Don't let any cars run over you or fall of a cliff." "I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway?" "'Cause if worst comes ..
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Ray Bradbury |
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4930d8b
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The Men of Earth came to Mars. They came because they were afraid or unafraid, because they were happy or unhappy, because they felt like Pilgrims or did not feel like Pilgrims. There was a reason for each man. They were leaving bad wives or bad towns; they were coming to find something or leave something or get something, to dig up something or bury something or leave something alone. They were coming with small dreams or large dreams or n..
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Ray Bradbury |
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23dad4e
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We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe
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arts
creativity
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Ray Bradbury |
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5f15eb8
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I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.
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death
change
life
maturing
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Ray Bradbury |
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0087b75
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Sandwich outdoors isn't a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.
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Ray Bradbury |
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c0b7235
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We never sit anything out. We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
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Ray Bradbury |
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20ed143
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Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.
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writing
treasure
trash
ray-bradbury
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Ray Bradbury |
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da41a3d
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Christ is one of the 'family' now. I often wonder if God recognizes his own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's regular peppermint stick now, all sugar crystal and saccharine - when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that ever worshiper absolutely needs.
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Ray Bradbury |
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09bb3a7
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I'm numb and I'm tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I'd been out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an umbrella or a coat. I'm soaked to the skin with emotion.
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Ray Bradbury |
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942d5fb
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Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!
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Ray Bradbury |
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3fd727b
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Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett."
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Ray Bradbury |
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69554a2
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Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.
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Ray Bradbury |
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446a4df
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I care so much I'm sick.
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Ray Bradbury |
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0babfae
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There must be something in books, things 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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Ray Bradbury |
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eaca1dc
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Coloured people don't like . Burn it. White people don't feel good about . Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.
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Ray Bradbury |