Ray Bradbury Quotes

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“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.”

“My gosh, if you’re going away, we got a million things to talk about! All the things we would’ve talked about next month, the month after! Praying mantises, zeppelins, acrobats, sword swallowers!”

“He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough.”

“We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth”

“Sunsets we always liked because they only happen once and go away."
"But, Lena, that's sad."
"No, if the sunset stayed and we got bored, that would be a real sadness.”

“Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.”

“Beware the autumn people”

“Creativity is a continual surprise.”

“The Internet is a big distraction. It's distracting, it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.”

“The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.”

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

“Can't you recognize the human in the inhuman?”

“Thinking little at all about nothing in particular.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes.”

“Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt”

“We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.”

“.. holding a book but reading the empty spaces.”

“It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.”

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

“Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.”

“Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.”

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!”

“Work. Don't Think. Relax.”

“Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.”

“Sandwich outdoors isn’t a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.”

“I care so much I’m sick.”

“The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.”

“Now that I have you thoroughly confused, let me pause to hear your own dismayed cry.”

“The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we've done fine tonight. Even Death can't spoil it.”

“I'm numb and I'm tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I'd been out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an umbrella or a coat. I'm soaked to the skin with emotion.”

“What are you up to now?" "I'm sill crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it.”