Quotes from Ray Bradbury

By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me.

Borracho de vida, y sin conocer el rumbo siguiente. Pero antes del amanecer uno ya está en marcha. ¿Y el viaje? Exactamente la mitad terror, la mitad júbilo.

For fifty years I've watched the grandfather clock in the hall, William. After it is wound I can predict to the hour when it will stop. Old people are no different. They can feel the machinery slow down and the last weights shift.

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 last one which makes the heart run over.

I've heard there are still hobo camps all across the country, here and there; walking camps they call them, and if you keep walking far enough and keep an eye peeled, they say there's lots of old Harvard degrees on the tracks between here and Los Angeles.

They had been hiding out, waiting, given shelter by my intuitive self, all these years. For I am that special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all.

If there is no feeling, there cannot be great art.

In your reading, find books to improve your color sense, your sense of shape and size in the world. Why not learn about the senses of smell and hearing? Your characters must sometimes use their noses and ears or they may miss half the smells and sounds of the city, and all of the sounds of the wilderness still loose in the trees and on the lawns of the city.

The men of Earth came to Mars.

You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.

Tyranny of the majority

La gente no habla de nada. - ¡Oh, de algo hablarán! - No, de nada. Nombran una serie de automóviles, hablan de ropa o de piscinas y dicen que es estupendo. Pero todos comentan lo mismo y nadie tiene una idea original.

And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world there was no longer need of firemen for the old purpose. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors.

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was younger I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks.

Since then, I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas.

Bet I know something else you don't. There's dew on the grass in the morning.

Only recently, glancing at the novel, I realized that Montag is named after a paper manufacturing company. And Faber, of course, is a maker of pencils! What a sly thing my subconscious was, to name them thus.

Quizá los libros puedan sacarnos de nuestra ignorancia. Tal vez podrían impedir que cometiéramos los mismos funestos errores.

La gente no habla de nada. –Oh, tienen que hablar de algo. –No, no, de nada. Citan automóviles, ropas, piscinas, y dicen ¡qué bien! Pero siempre repiten lo mismo, y nadie dice nada diferente, y la mayor parte del tiempo, en los cafés, hacen funcionar los gramófonos automáticos de chistes, y escuchan chistes viejos

Everything, thought Lavinia, is boxed and locked and wrapped and shaded. She imagined the people in their moonlit beds. And their breathing in the summer-night rooms, safe and together.

Where strangers scanned each other's faces and found yesterday's sunrise instead of tomorrow's midnight.

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth? But when he was held, rootless, in midair, by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane.