Quotes from Ray Bradbury

The Martians discovered the secret of life among animals. The animal does not question life. It lives. Its very reason for living is life; it enjoys and relishes life.

I wish for you a wrestling match with your creative muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories... Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

Some day our cities would open up and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big.

There it is. And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of his house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again. The Happiness Machine, he said. The Happiness Machine.

And fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes.

Garret? -llamó Stendahl en voz baja. Garret calló-. ¿Sabe usted por qué le hago esto? Porque quemó los libros del señor Poe sin haberlos leído. Le bastó la opinión de los demás. Si hubiera leído los libros, habría adivinado lo que yo le iba a hacer, cuando bajamos hace un momento. La ignorancia es fatal, señor Garret.

People die every day, psychologically speaking. Some part of them gets tired. And that small part tries to kill off the entire person.

If only someone else's flesh and brain and memory. If only they could have taken her mind along to the dry cleaner's and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and reblocked it and brought it back in the morning. If only...

For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conservationist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my books or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule.

After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. Books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.

No," moaned Tom in despair. "School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer's even over! Ruin half the vacation!

no man's a hero to himself.

The Official was bending over his desk, staring at the sergeant. May I ask you a question? Yes. Have you ever thought you were Christ? I can't say that I have. But I have considered that God was good to me to let me find what I was looking for, if that's what you mean.

Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to thèguilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.

Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day, every day, sleeping its life away.

It's a lonely life, but you're used to it now, aren't you?

I don't want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?

Fall in love and stay in love. Explode. Don't intellectualize. Get passionate about ideas. Cram your head full of images. Stay in the library. Stay off the internet and all that crap. Read all the great books. Read all the great poetry. See all the great films. Fill your life with metaphors. And then explode.

A woman's voice answered, Hello? Walter cried back at her, Hello, oh Lord, hello! This is a recording, recited the woman's voice. Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the wire spool so she may call you when she returns? Hello? This is a recording. Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message - He hung up. He sat with his mouth twitching. On second thought he redialed that number. When Miss Helen Arasumian comes home, he said, tell her to go to hell.

And Quell asked, 'Ah, but what is nature?' Socrates answered, sparks showering, 'God surprising himself with odd miracles of flesh.

That's the good part about dying; when you've got nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.

No fantasy, no reality. No studies concerning loss, no gain. No imagination, no will. No impossible dreams: No possible solutions.