Quotes from Ray Bradbury

They contain half the damning truths I suspected at midnight, and half of the saving truths I re-found next noon.

One of the characteristic aspects of our time is that we fear the future. We fear the unholy powers unleashed by science. We fear the absolute power of states more tyrannical than the tyrannies of the past because they strive to rule men's minds as well as their bodies. And writers, who can imagine the dreadful details of such a future more vividly than the rest of us, write books capable of troubling our sleep indefinitely. . . .

At least you were a fool about the right things

He was a thing of brush and liquid eye, of fur and muzzle and hoof, he was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like autumn if you bled it out on the ground.

La diferencia entre el hombre que se limita a cortar el césped y un autentico jardinero esta en el tacto. El cortador de césped igual podría no haber estado allí, el jardinero estará allí para siempre.

There's a relationship between the great poems of the world and the great screenplays: they both deal in compact images.

No nacemos libres e iguales, como dice la Constitución, nos hacemos iguales. Todo hombre es la imagen de todos los demás, y todos somos así igualmente felices

We all need someone higher, wiser, older to tell us we're not crazy after all, that what we're doing is all right.

Ä°nsanlar neden insanlara ac? vermek istiyor? Dünyada yeterince ac? yokmuÅŸ gibi, illa insanlar? öyle ÅŸeylerle rahats?z edeceksiniz!

School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?

You're very tired, he said. You've traveled a long way and you belong to a tired people who've been without faith a long time, and you want to believe so much now that you're interfering with yourself. You'll only make it harder if you kill. You'll never find him that way.

La magia reside solamente en aquello que los libros dicen; en cómo cosen los harapos del universo para darnos una nueva vestidura.

It has nothing to do with pay. Either you love what you are doing or... Look, I wrote for years, and I wasn't paid. My love carried me through all those years.

You don't have to move, do you? On occasion, maybe, like tonight. But mostly you travel back and forth between your ears.

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at least one which makes the heart run over.' 

One fire would destroy all of us, no matter who started it, for what reason.

Cram them [the people] full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, 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.

That's how I think of children, cruel as they sometimes are, mean as I know they can be, but not yet showing the meanness around their eyes or in their eyes, not yet full of tiredness. They're so eager for everything! I guess that's what I miss most in older folks, the eagerness gone nine times out of ten, the freshness gone, so much of the drive and life down the drain. I like to watch school let out each day. It's like someone threw a bunch of flowers out the school front doors.

It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.

do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life.

Will's father struck one blow before his left hand was seized, held, squeezed. As the boys watched, shouting, they saw Charles Halloway gasp and fall to one knee. Mr. Dark squeezed that left hand harder

spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

You just won't admit you like crying, too. You cry just so long and everything's fine. And there's your happy ending. And you're ready to go back out and walk around with folks again. And it's the start of gosh-knows-what-all! Any time now, Mr. Forrester will think it over and see it's just the only way and have a good cry and then look around and see it's morning again, even though it's five in the afternoon.

He hung up his black beetle-colored helmet and shined it; he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showed luxuriously, and then, whistling, hands in pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole.