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44f93fc
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In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book. All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, ..
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on-writing
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Ray Bradbury |
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98ebb4b
|
Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
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Ray Bradbury |
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09d61f0
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What is it about fire that's so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?...The thing man wanted to invent, but never did...If you let it go on, it'd burn our lifetimes out. What is fire? It is a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledygook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences.
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Ray Bradbury |
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5c19196
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Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day.
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life-quotes
underwear
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Ray Bradbury |
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50b9256
|
The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
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words
literature
reading
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Ray Bradbury |
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12c4561
|
We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.
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Ray Bradbury |
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8ccbec2
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Now that I have you thoroughly confused, let me pause to hear your own dismayed cry.
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Ray Bradbury |
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620e845
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Why love the boy in a March field with his kite braving the sky? Because our fingers burn with the hot string singeing our hands. Why love some girl viewed from a train bent to a country well? The tongue remembers iron water cool on some long lost noon. Why weep at strangers dead by the road? They resemble friends unseen in forty years. Why laugh when clowns are hot by pies? We taste custard we taste life. Why love the woman who is your wif..
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Ray Bradbury |
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b13b73b
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The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.
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progress
philosophical
philosophy
dressing
innovation
melancholy
thinking
thought
introspection
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Ray Bradbury |
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60eda8a
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And metaphors like cats behind your smile, Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride, Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)
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metaphor
purr
smile
pride
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Ray Bradbury |
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ae57c07
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The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we've done fine tonight. Even Death can't spoil it.
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running
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Ray Bradbury |
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ef46794
|
Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.
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Ray Bradbury |
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270fe75
|
The Martians were there--in the canal--reflected in the water.... The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water....
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Ray Bradbury |
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7e2040c
|
What are you up to now?" "I'm sill crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it."
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Ray Bradbury |
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8e6a720
|
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. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
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Ray Bradbury |
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00ec36f
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Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?' 'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.
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science-fiction
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Ray Bradbury |
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02c988b
|
Kerosene," he said, because the silence had lengthened, "is nothing but perfume to me."
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Ray Bradbury |
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15107a4
|
A long time back, she thought, I dreamed a dream, and was enjoying it so much when someone wakened me, and that day I was born. And now? Now, let me see...She cast her mind back. Where was I? she thought. Ninety years...how to take up the thread and the pattern of that lost dream again? She put out a small hand. There...yes, that was it. She smiled. Deeper in the warm snow hill she turned her head upon her pillow. That was better. Now, yes,..
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Ray Bradbury |
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e42e6cd
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Out of the nursery into the college and back into the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.
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Ray Bradbury |
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83c5345
|
It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state. There wasn't so much wilderness around you couldn't see the town. But on the other hand there wasn't so much town you couldn't see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble..
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Ray Bradbury |
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2b02094
|
People don't talk about anything... No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.
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Ray Bradbury |
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d62d272
|
And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.
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Ray Bradbury |
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2f64610
|
For John was running, and this was terrible. Because if you ran, time ran. You yelled and screamed and raced and rolled and tumbled and all of a sudden the sun was gone and the whistle was blowing and you were on your long way home to supper. When you weren't looking, the sun got around behind you! The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing! You could stretch a day to three days, sure, just by watching!
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Ray Bradbury |
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e82a52b
|
From the outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living.
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Ray Bradbury |
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e882002
|
I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up hal..
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kids
dandelion-wine
trees
night
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Ray Bradbury |
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fa90452
|
This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today-explode-fly-apart-disintegrate! The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, by reading your story, will catch fire, too?
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writing
inspirational
explode
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Ray Bradbury |
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49fbac3
|
Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.
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moundshroud
pumpkin
halloween
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Ray Bradbury |
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a3957b2
|
I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously." [
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seriousness
|
Ray Bradbury |
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f6d3db1
|
Dad, will they ever come back?" "No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road." "Oh, no," said Will. "Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun." They moved around the carousel slowly. "What will they loo..
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temptation
dark
light
fear
life
internal-conflict
evil
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Ray Bradbury |
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be43caf
|
Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents.
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Ray Bradbury |
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b7f1c28
|
I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?
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god
son
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Ray Bradbury |
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1b0ded1
|
And then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from your hold upon the sky, and drop ..
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apples
time-passing
autumn
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Ray Bradbury |
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4f15874
|
I hate being clever, thought the captain, when you don't really feel clever and don't want to be clever. To sneak around and make plans and feel big about making them. I hate this feeling of thinking I'm doing right when I'm not really certain I am. Who are we, anyway? The majority? Is that the answer? The majority is always holy, is it not? Always, always; just never wrong for one little insignificant tiny moment, is it? Never ever wrong i..
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Ray Bradbury |
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19cd64a
|
I'd like to know what a place is when I'm . I'd like to be .
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Ray Bradbury |
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06a0dbb
|
But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're ..
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reading
fahrenheit-451
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Ray Bradbury |
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7e04650
|
It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.
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fahrenheit-451
ray-bradbury
government
technology
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Ray Bradbury |
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e4f920f
|
I have three rules to live by: Get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin, and when all else fails, run like hell.
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life
inspirational
|
Ray Bradbury |
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b4a0c06
|
Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. 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'. ..
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Ray Bradbury |
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a55e36c
|
Impossible; for how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you?
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Ray Bradbury |
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3438818
|
Good to evil seems evil
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good-vs-evil
|
Ray Bradbury |
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942d2ba
|
Are you happy?" she [Clarisse] said. "Am I what?" he [Montag] cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently."
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Ray Bradbury |
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2c5dfa3
|
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets. And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropp..
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winter
spring
summer
|
Ray Bradbury |
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8e01fc8
|
And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a women half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between.
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Ray Bradbury |
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6a5491a
|
I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.
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writing-craft
|
Ray Bradbury |