Quotes from Ray Bradbury

Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before...It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over.

I'm interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.

In your reading, find books to improve your color sense, your sense of shape and size in the world.

Ignorance is fatal.

The Internet is a big distraction. It's distracting, it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.

A Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time," she said. "I was born out of New York. The things that are most wrong here summoned me. (Drink Entire: Against The Madness Of Crowds)

You're insane! I won't argue that point.

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!

Good to evil seems evil.

We never sit anything out. We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.

There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing.

And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over.

Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.

Christ is one of the 'family' now. I often wonder if God recognizes his own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's regular peppermint stick now, all sugar crystal and saccharine - when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that ever worshiper absolutely needs.

I'm numb and I'm tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I'd been out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an umbrella or a coat. I'm soaked to the skin with emotion.

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.

Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.

People don't talk about anything... No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.

The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water.... The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water....

We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe

Now that I have you thoroughly confused, let me pause to hear your own dismayed cry.

Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.