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76af6c7
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Mother wasn't afraid of the sky in the day so much, but it was the night stars that she wanted to turn off, and sometimes I could almost see her reaching for a switch in her mind, but never finding it.
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Ray Bradbury |
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664528c
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Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.
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Ray Bradbury |
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7bdeb14
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Good writers touch life often.
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Ray Bradbury |
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471c856
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Up steps, three, six, nine, twelve! Slap! Their palms hit the library door. * * * They opened the door and stepped in. They stopped. The library deeps lay waiting for them. Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, ..
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Ray Bradbury |
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892b1ba
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School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?
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school
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Ray Bradbury |
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48007e3
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Love will fly if held too lightly, love will die if held too tightly.
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Ray Bradbury |
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ea5ce88
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Fiction gives us empathy: It puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.
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fiction
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Ray Bradbury |
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3c060e5
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For everyone nowadays knows, absolutely is CERTAIN, that nothing bad will ever happen to ME. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there ARE. But let's not talk about them, eh? By the time the consequences catch up to you, it's too late, isn't it, Montag?
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Ray Bradbury |
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1fb5971
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Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible 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 giv..
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philosophy
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Ray Bradbury |
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8e8b374
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We all are rich and ignore the buried fact of accumulated wisdom.
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writing
life-experience
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Ray Bradbury |
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f224b73
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Those children are right," he would have said. "They stole nothing from you, my dear. These things don't belong to you here, you now. They belonged to her, that other you, so long ago." Oh, thought Mrs. Bentley. And then, as though an ancient phonograph record had been set hissing under a steel needle, she remembered a conversation she had once had with Mr. Bentley--Mr. Bentley, so prim, a pink carnation in his whisk-broomed lapel, saying,..
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Ray Bradbury |
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1926a76
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Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.
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life-and-living
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Ray Bradbury |
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e66e3cc
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What is the greatest reward a writer can have? Isn't it that day when someone rushes up to you, his face bursting with honesty, his eyes afire with admiration and cries, "That new story of yours was fine, really wonderful!"
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writing
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Ray Bradbury |
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1f35fa2
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I shall remain on Mars and read a book.
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reading
the-illustrated-man
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Ray Bradbury |
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be77eec
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The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the ..
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Ray Bradbury |
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eb81e03
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Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, aft..
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Ray Bradbury |
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c27b076
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For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old OCtober and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. FOr these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The..
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Ray Bradbury |
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3fa8fa1
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Kitaplar bize ne tur esekler ve aptallar oldugumuzu hatirlatmak icindir. Kitaplar, toren alayi buyuk bir gurultu icinde caddede ilerlerken, Sezar'in kulagina 'Unutma, Sezar, sen de olumlusun' diyen pretoryen muhafizlaridir.
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Ray Bradbury |
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52fbc20
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They walked still farther and the girl said, "Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?" No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it." Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames."
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Ray Bradbury |
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6677367
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The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important, we musn't be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world. We're nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise.
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self-importance
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Ray Bradbury |
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b7437a1
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And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right.
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wrong
life
right
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Ray Bradbury |
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401e5bd
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bums on the outside, libraries inside.
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Ray Bradbury |
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194352b
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If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and put aside in your life.
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Ray Bradbury |
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f75dc9f
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Self-conciousness is the enemy of all creativity.
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self-consciousness
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Ray Bradbury |
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5f16003
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Through neglect, ignorance, or inability, the new intellectual Borgias cram hairballs down our throats and refuse us the convulsion that could make us well. They have forgotten, if they ever knew, the ancient knowledge that only by being truly sick can one regain health. Even beasts know when it is good and proper to throw up. Teach me how to be sick then, in the right time and place, so that I may again walk in the fields and with the wise..
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Ray Bradbury |
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2b4e68a
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There were only the great diamonds and sapphires and emerald mists and velvet inks of space, with God's voice mingling among the crystal fires.
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universe
beauty
god
kaleidoscope
jewels
outer-space
colours
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Ray Bradbury |
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26379cb
|
There where hundreds of graves. There where hundreds of women. There were hundreds of daughters. There were hundreds of sons. And hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands of candles. The whole graveyard was one swarm of candleshine as if a population of fireflies had heard of a Grand Conglomeration and had flown here to settle in and flame upon the stones and light the brown faces and the dark eyes and the black hair.
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Ray Bradbury |
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b9376e1
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I never in my life argued with a piece of cake or a bowl of ice cream.
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Ray Bradbury |
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eecd89c
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And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. ..
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equality
fear
happiness
fahrenheit-451
ray-bradbury
inferiority
peace
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Ray Bradbury |
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34167bf
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Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they'll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? how can it happen to
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pain
good
goodness
people-will-hurt-you
hurt
cry
description
innocence
vulnerable
sad
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Ray Bradbury |
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5dd1d88
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I am a child of the poisonous wind that copulated with the East River on an oil-slick, garbage infested midnight. I turn about on my own parentage. I inoculate against those very biles that brought me to light. I am a serum born of venoms. I am the antibody of all Time. I am the Cure. You do of the City, do you not? Manhattan is your punisher, let me be you shield.
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witches
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Ray Bradbury |
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50cb371
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We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen.
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Ray Bradbury |
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e7eee5d
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They read the long afternoon through, while the cold November rain fell from the sky upon the quiet house.
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Ray Bradbury |
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01ae198
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Fire is bright and fire is clean.
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clean
fire
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Ray Bradbury |
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50bb4df
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Somehow, irresistibly, the prime thing was: nothing mattered. Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and it's quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp.
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Ray Bradbury |
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0c304b6
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The dust was antique spice, burnt maple leaves, a prickling blue that teemed and sifted to earth. Swarming its own shadows, the dust filtered over the tents.
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carnival
october
wicked
dying
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Ray Bradbury |
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5ba9fc7
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A day without writing was a little death.
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Ray Bradbury |
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e7ad1b8
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The sidewalks were haunted by dust ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up, swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strol- lers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes every- where, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with s..
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heat
summer
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Ray Bradbury |
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baf6ada
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I'll be damned if death wears my sadness as glad rags.
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Ray Bradbury |
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4e2959d
|
Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let
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writing
plotting
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Ray Bradbury |
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c6dbd1b
|
You don't have to burn books, do you, if the world starts to fill up with nonreaders, nonlearners, non-knowers?
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Ray Bradbury |
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1348658
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INTERVIEWER You're self-educated, aren't you? BRADBURY
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reading
self-education
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Ray Bradbury |
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86769ce
|
The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill. Shake down all the grains of Time--the big grains of centuries, and the small grains of years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes--and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all directions in a fine pollen, carried by cold winds to blanket the town like dust, everywhere. Spores from that clock lodged in your flesh to wrinkle it, to grow bones to monstrous size, to burst feet fr..
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time
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Ray Bradbury |
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f9b9f00
|
If you had your way you'd pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you'd leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you'd have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn't go crazy. Instead of that, why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son.
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Ray Bradbury |