Ray Bradbury Quotes (401 quotes, page 4)

Ray Bradbury: 401 quotes18 likes

Ray Bradbury Quotes

“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)
Context: For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 142
Context: “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Well.” She started pouring tea. “To start things off, what do you think of the world?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“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.”
“You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years.”
“It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”
They both laughed quietly.

“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!”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

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

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

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

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

“Beware the autumn people”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

“Creativity is a continual surprise.”

Ray Bradbury

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

Ray Bradbury

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

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

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

Ray Bradbury book The Illustrated Man

Source: The Illustrated Man

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

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

“Thinking little at all about nothing in particular.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

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

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

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

Ray Bradbury book The Halloween Tree

Source: The Halloween Tree

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

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

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

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

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

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: I don’t understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. 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.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

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

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

Source: The October Country

“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!'.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451