Ray Bradbury Quotes
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Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.
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The Greek philosophies teach us that we are a combination of dark and light, good and evil, and murderer and savior, hmm? And until we know this completely about ourselves we cannot love well, and we cannot forgive ourselves.
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Love what you do and do what you love.
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I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.
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Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.
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Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.
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If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.
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My characters talk to one another, and when it reaches a certain pitch of excitement I jump out of bed and run and trap them before they are gone.
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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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Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don't have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.
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Treasure this day and Treasure yourself, truly, neither will ever happen again.
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Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip, for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.
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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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Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.
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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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I'll tell you," said Beatty, smiling at his cards. "That made you for a little while a drunkard. Read a few lines and off you go over the cliff. Bang, you're ready to blow up the world, chop off heads, knock down women and children, destroy authority. I know. I've been through it all.
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Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.
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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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I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible.
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I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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All silence is. All emptiness. And now: The dawn.
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When I started writing seriously, I made the major discovery of my life - that I am right and everybody else is wrong if they disagree with me. What a great thing to learn: Don't listen to anyone else, and always go your own way.
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Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I am one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the 'guilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.
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The river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper.