Quotes from Ray Bradbury

It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it's an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn't life a play? Don't I play it well?

Nothing ever likes to die--not even a room. (p.23 --> The Veldt)

I know it. I know everything.' She waited a moment. 'What do you know?' 'No use making more people. People die.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, . . .

Mireasma fanului uscat si curgerea domoala a apei trezira in el dorinta de a se culca intr-o claie de fan proaspat, intr-un sopron singuratic, departe de autostrazile zgomotoase, in spatele vreunei ferme linistite, sub vreo moara veche de vant, care sa vuiasca lin, cu vuietul anilor ce trec. Ar sta treaz toata noaptea in sopronul acela, ascultand zvoana departata a jivinelor, ganganiilor si copacilor, freamatul si forfota lor marunta.

Everyone thinks that. It's one of those little secrets we keep from each other. Show me a serious man and I'll show you a man who has never wept. Show me a madman and I'll show you a man who dried his tears a long time ago. Go ahead." "I

All I know is I feel good going to bed nights, Doug. That's a happy ending once a day. Next morning I'm up and maybe things go bad. But all I got to do is remember that I'm going to bed that night and just lying there a while makes everything ok.

Look at yourself then. Consider everything you have fed yourself over the years. Was it a banquet or a starvation diet? Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven't friends. Go find some.

If this goes on . . ." fiction takes an element of life today, something clear and obvious and normally something troubling, and asks what would happen if that thing, that one thing, became bigger, became all-pervasive, changed the way we thought and behaved.

Where do we go from here? Would books help us?" "Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.

Faber: Number one as I say quality information. Number two: Leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what people learn from the interaction of the first two. Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451

yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies.

No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said.

We got caught reading nights with flashlights under our sheets, right? So, nobody'll suspect an old jar of fireflies; folks'll think it's just a night museum.

Books were only a receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we would forget.

Time is so strange and life is twice as strange. The cogs miss, the wheels turn, and lives interlace too early or too late.

They quit trying too hard to destroy everything, to humble everything. 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. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful.

the city rolled over and fell down dead. The sound of its death came after.

Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

Leaning into the wall as if all of the hunger of looking would find the secret of her sleepless unease there.

He felt she was walking in a circle about him, turning him end for end, shaking him quietly, and emptying his pockets, without once moving herself. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin.

No one in his right mind, the good Lord knows, would have children!

Not words in books or words you say, but real thoughts, real actions, quick thought, quick action, win the day.