Ray Bradbury: Trending quotes (page 10)

“Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”

“And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.”

“Suddenly the day was gone,
night came out from under each tree and spread.”

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"
"Oh. Of course.”

“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.”

“I'm interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.”

“The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.”

“But no man's a hero to himself.”

“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.”

“Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.”

“The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.”

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

“And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over.”

“In your reading, find books to improve your color sense, your sense of shape and size in the world.”

“I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.”

“When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

“Why live? Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of more life and the living of as good a life as possible.”

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again…”

“Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.”