“It is a subliminal thing. It is the tick of a clock that has ticked so long one no longer notices. Something is in a room when a man lives in it. Something is not in the room when a man is dead in it.”

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. 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.”

“What did the others give to each other?Nothingness.Granger stood looking back with Montag. “Everyone must leave something behindwhen he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or awall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your handtouched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and whenpeople look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. Thedifference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in thetouching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; thegardener will be there a lifetime.”

“But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime. I know everything worth knowing about myself--"~Something Wicked This Way Comes”

“When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?”

“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”

“Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.”