Ray Bradbury

“Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.”

“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.”

“Yo no sé ni siquiera que el agua está compuesta por oxígeno e hidrógeno, y estas [se refiere a sus hijas, sus mordaces críticos] me echan a la cara que las lunas salen del este. ¿Pero qué me importan si las lunas salen del oeste o del este, si en Marte llueve o no llueve? Yo no proporciono breviarios a los matemáticos y a los físicos. Pero un escritor de ciencia ficción, contestan, tiene que saber ciertas cosas. Bien. Toda la vida llamándome escritor de ciencia ficción, y aún no he entendido lo que significa. Desde hace algún tiempo me llaman escritor de la Era Espacial. Suena algo más respetable, pero tampoco entiendo qué significa. Solamente, el que hace 20 años todos se burlaban de mí. ‘Pero qué ridículo eres’, decían, ‘absurdo’. ‘¿Qué quiere decir astronauta? ¿Qué quiere decir cosmopuerto, ir a la Luna? ¡Eres tonto!’ Luego, de pronto, explota la Era Espacial, y se realiza lo que escribía. Pero no se arrepienten, no piden disculpas, siguen diciendo ‘No es una obra de arte la suya, es cinerama. Bien, ¿qué es el cinerama? ¿Quién inventó el cinerama sino el viejo Mike, Michelangelo en resumen? ¿No la hizo él La Capilla Sixtina? ¿Y qué otra cosa es La Capilla Sixtina sino cinerama en pintura? Y si el viejo Michelangelo pintaba en cinerama, ¿por qué yo no puedo escribir el futuro en ciencia ficción? La ciencia ficción me sirve para interpretar el tiempo en que vivo, en que vivirán los hijos de mis hijos, para describir sus amenazas.”

“He walked toward the corner, thinking little at all about nothing in particular.”

“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.”

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

“We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.”

“How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. So what do we do? We men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world or ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.”

“How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!”

“Look for the little loves. Find and shape the little bitternesses.”

“And in the years when your shadow leaned clear across the land as you lay abed nights with your heartbeat mounting to the billions, his invention must let a man drowse easy in the falling leaves like the boys in autumn who, comfortably strewn in the dry stacks, are content to be a part of the death of the world...”

“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.”

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

“I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite. There!”

“The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are rediculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humor.”

“Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.”

“..love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, hatreds and immaturities.”

“Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh?' ... There sat Beatty, perspiring gently, the floor littered with swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm.”

“¿Se da cuenta ahora porqué los libros son odiados y temidos? Muestran los poros del rostro de la vida”

“I'm so scared i could sprinkle dust.”

“Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it. Ignore the authors who say ‘Oh, my God, what word? Oh, Jesus Christ…’, you know. Now, to hell with that. It’s not work. If it’s work, stop and do something else.”

“The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching,' he said. 'The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun and you don't have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less.”

“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling 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?”

“Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline!”

“Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”

“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?”

“I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer.Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview(Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)”

“Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before death is what counts.”

“"It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books.”

“I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.”

“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.”

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

“Good to evil seems evil.”

“Will we ever stop being afraid of nights and death?When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

“They run amuck; I let them. Pride of lions in the yard. Stare and they burn a hole in your retina. A common flower, a weed that no one sees, yes. But for us, a noble thing, the dandelion.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Hiç de anayasanın dediği gibi kisme eşit ve özgür doğmamıştır,herkes eşit yapılır. Her insan bir diğerinin sureti olunca herkes mutlu olur,ortada çekinilecek korkulacak,herkesin kendisini yargılamasına yol açacak dağlar yoktur.”

“insanlar daha çok meşaleye benziyorlardı;birileri üfleyinceye kadar yanarlardı.Ne kadar nadir diğer insanların yüzleri sizi sizden alıp,kendi duygularınızı en titrek düşüncelerinizi sizlere yansıtırdı?”

“This is happening to me," said Montag."What a dreadful surprise," said Beatty. "For everyone nowadays knows, absolutelyis certain, that nothing will ever happen to me. Others die, I go on. There are noconsequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But let's not talk aboutthem, eh? By the time the consequences catch up with you, it's too late, isn't it,Montag?”

“Science fiction is the art of the possible not the impossible.”

“From the outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living.”

“Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.”

“I memorized all of “John Carter” and “Tarzan,” and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, “Take me home!” I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities.”

“When I look back now, I realize what a trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon.”

“I don't talk things, sir,' said Faber. 'I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive.”

“Don't haggle and nag them; you were so recently of them yourself. They are so confident that they will run on forever. But they won't run on. They don't know that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that some day it'll have to hit. They see only the blaze, the pretty fire, as you saw it.”

“They are so confident they will run on forever. But they won't run on. They don't know that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that someday it'll have to hit. They see only the blaze, the pretty fire, as you saw it.”

“You don’t question Providence. If you can’t have the reality, a dream is just as good.”