Quotes from Ray Bradbury

A man, a woman, rather than walk away from, or kill, each other, ride each other a lifetime, pulling hair, extracting fingernails, the pain of each to the other like a narcotic that makes existence worth the day.

Sometimes I drive all night and come back and you don't know it. It's fun out in the country. You hit rabbits, sometimes you hit dogs.

Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us.

Why, just lying there, Jim, you run so fast. I never saw anyone move so much, just sleeping.

The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory. Remember that pianist who said that if he did not practice every day he would know, if he did not practice for two days, the critics would know, after three days, his audiences would know.

Midnight, said the clock. Time, it said, Darkness. Flights of night birds flew up to carry the final peal away, out over the lake and into the night country, gone.

I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it.

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, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine percent of them is in a book.

I'll never forget today! I'll always remember, I know! Grandfather looked up through the cellar window at the late-summer trees stirring in a colder wind. Of course you will, Tom, he said. Of course you will.

The kitchen, without a doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved around it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple.

They were given a 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. That's you, Montag and that's me.

Why,' said Montag slowly, 'we've stopped in front of my house.

If this goes on . . ." thought Ray Bradbury, "nobody will read books anymore," and Fahrenheit 451 began. He had written a short story once called "The Pedestrian," about a man who is incarcerated by the police after he is stopped simply for walking. That story became part of the world he was building, and seventeen-year-old Clarisse McLellan becomes a pedestrian in a world where nobody walks.

He floated on his back when the valise filled and sank; the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood.

I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? that's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.

To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself—

So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim

You're a fool, a damn fool, an awful fool, an idiot, an awful idiot, a damn idiot, and a fool, a damn fool

Ma questa è la cosa meravigliosa dell'uomo: che non si scoraggia mai, l'uomo, o non si disgusta mai fino al punto di rinunciare a rifare tutto da capo, perché sa, l'uomo, quanto tutto ciò sia importante e quanto valga la pena d'esser fatto.

Você precisa entender que nossa civilização é tão vasta que não podemos permitir que nossas minorias sejam transtornadas e agitadas.

How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?

Faber sniffed the book. Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land?

Quizá los libros nos saquen un poco de esta oscuridad. Quizá eviten que cometamos los mismos condenados errores.

Llénalos de noticias incombustibles. Sentirán que la información los ahoga, pero se creerán inteligentes