Quotes from Ray Bradbury

We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.

Boy, said the old man at last, in five years, how would you like a job selling shoes in this emporium? Gosh, thanks, Mr. Sanderson, but I don't know what I'm going to be yet. Anything you want to be son, said the old man, you'll be. No one will ever stop you.

I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I'd never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can't say I'm greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don't fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it.

If you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve.

I mean, you don't just love people, you must LOVE them with exclamation points.

Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain.

By living well, by observing as you live, by reading well and observing as you read, you have fed Your Most Original Self.

Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust 'reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings.

The writer must let his fingers run out the story of his characters, who, being only human and full of strange dreams and obsessions, are only too glad to run.

They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.

Kindness and intelligence are the preoccupations of age. Being cruel and thoughtless is far more fascinating when you're twenty.

Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, I'm not happy, I'm not happy.

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides of a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget that 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.

He was part of us and when he died all the actions stopped dead, and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. i've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million actions the night he passed on. 

You've got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.

For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.

Don't listen, whispered Faber. He's trying to confuse. He's slippery. Watch out.

You'll be found, your nickels, dimes and Indian-heads fused by electroplating. Abe Lincolns melted into Miss Columbias, eagles plucked raw on the backs of quarters, all run to quicksilver in your jeans. More! Any boy hit by lightning, lift his lid and there on his eyeball, pretty as the Lord's Prayer on a pin, find the last scene the boy ever saw! A box-Brownie photo, by God, of that fire climbing down the sky to blow you like a penny whistle, suck your soul back up along the bright stair!

Me? I'm the original sad man. I read a book and it makes me sad. See a film: sad. Plays? they really work me over.

MOTHER: Why, just lying there, Jim, you run so fast. I never saw anyone move so much, just sleeping. Promise me, Jim. Wherever you go and come back, bring lots of kids. Let them run wild. Let me spoil them, some day. JIM: I'm never going to own anything that can hurt me.

Man had become too much man and not enough animal

You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by.

The river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper.

Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple the population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?