Ray Bradbury cytaty

strona 13

„Czy wszyscy umierający ludzie czują się tak, jakby nigdy nie żyli?”

„Nie należy sądzić książki po obwolucie.”

„Wybaczcie mi bluźnierstwo, ale nie przebaczę Bogu, że zabrał Kuttnera z tego świata tak wcześnie, w 1958 roku. To jego śmierć sprawiła, że źle wspominam ten rok. Szczególnie źle dlatego, że jego talent był specyficzny i niepowtarzalny.”

„Istotnie, wszystko odeszło. Kiedy życie się kończy jest jak mignięcie barwnego filmu, ułamek sekundy na ekranie – wszystkie niechęci i namiętności skoncentrowane i przez moment płonące w przestrzeni, i zanim człowiek zdąży krzyknąć Oto szczęśliwy dzień, oto nieszczęśliwy, oto zła twarz, a to dobra, z filmu zostaje jedynie popiół, ekran ciemnieje.”

„451° Fahrenheita – to temperatura, w której papier zaczyna się tlić i płonie…”

„Jedyną osobą, która odczuwała chłód w promieniu wielu mil, była panna Frostbite, asystentka podróżującego magika. Stała na wystawie od trzech dni, zamknięta w bryle lodu, i, jak mówili ludzie, nie oddychała, nie jadła i nie mówiła. Uważałem, że pozbawienie kobiety tego ostatniego przywileju było szczególnym okrucieństwem.”

„Obracając się w środowiskach uniwersyteckich, wśród intelektualistów i słuchając nazwisk, które padają w czasie rozmów o książkach, ciągle słyszy się:
Tolkien, Lovecraft, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Wells, Verne, Orwell, Vonnegut oraz, przepraszam za wyrażenie, Bradbury.
A nieczęsto – Kuttner.
Dlaczego tak jest?
Dlaczego Henry Kuttner po śmierci stał się pisarzem zapomnianym?
Czy był równie dobry jak tamci?
Tak.
Czy napisał wiele?
Więcej niż niejeden z nich.
Czy był pisarzem jak owoc granatu – pełnym nasion-pomysłów?
Tak.
Czy dorównywał pozostałym błyskotliwością?
Może nie zawsze.
Czy dął w swój własny róg?
Rzadko.
Może jego prace były zbyt różnorodne i obejmujące wiele rodzajów fantastyki?
Możliwe.”

„Każde wymarłe miasto ma swoje duchy. To znaczy wspomnienia.”

“Joy is the grace we say to God.”

“I feel like I own all the kids in the world because, since I've never grown up myself, all my books are automatically for children. … It's mutual delight and love made manifest. For one thing, kids love me because I write stories that tell them about their capacity for evil. I'm one of the few writers who lets you cleanse yourself that way.”

“I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing.”

“Trapped in the blood, athirst for air,
Christ, who once was employed as single Son of God
Now finds Himself among three billion on a billion
Brother sons, their arms thrown wide to grasp and hold
and walk them everywhere
Now weaving this, now weaving that in swoons…”

“Anna said, “Must they have a reason?”
“No, not if they’re insane, no,” said Juliet. “In that case no reasons are necessary.””

“I just can’t imagine being in a world and not being fascinated with what ideas are doing to us.”

“Magazines today are almost all stupid and moronic to start with. And it makes me furious that I can't find any articles to read anymore. I used to enjoy Forbes and Fortune, but now the pages are completely cluttered with ads.”

“My stories run up and bite me in the leg — I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.”

“Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man’s attitude when he has power.”

“Timothy looked at the deep ocean sky, trying to see Earth and the war and the ruined cities and the men killing each other since the day he was born. But he saw nothing. The war was as removed and far off as two flies battling to the death in the arch of a great high and silent cathedral. And just as senseless…
“What are you looking at so hard, Dad?”
“I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace, and responsibility.”
“All that up there?”
“No. I didn’t find it. It’s not there any more. Maybe it’ll never be there again. Maybe we fooled ourselves that it was ever there.””

“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.”

“Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple.”

“The women in my life have all been librarians, English teachers, or booksellers. If they couldn't speak pidgin Tolstoy, articulate Henry James, or give me directions to Usher and Ox, it was no go. I have always longed for education, and pillow talk's the best.”

“Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

“I can work anywhere.”

“Never question the miraculous when it happens. ”

“I took the candy wrappers shamefacedly, and felt the extra ten pounds sag around my middle as I held these flags of defeat.”

“We all just gave up on that and stayed friends.”

“Will power is the answer. Will power. No white bread, no Nestle's Crunch bars… I flinched and felt the last of the bars melting in my pockets.”

“I’m working on a screenplay of Fahrenheit 451 that will star Mel Gibson. It will be better than the original because they left a lot of things out of the first film. … It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can’t say certain things. The homosexual groups don’t want you to criticize them. It’s thought control and freedom of speech control.”

“I didn’t write Fahrenheit 451 about us. I wrote it about Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler. … I may not even talk about book banning if I don’t feel like it. I don’t prepare anything ahead. I have a dozen subjects to talk about because I write plays and poetry and essays, short stories and novels and screenplays and teleplays and operas. I’ll get lost, and the audience will have a wonderful time. And I’ll get a standing ovation, and they’ll go home.”

“You remember winning, don’t you? A battle won, somewhere?”

“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.”

“Then I went in and shot the televisor, 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 myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until—bang!”

“I don't believe in the anthropomorphic God. … I have four daughters and eight grandchildren. My soul lives on in them. That's immortality. That's the only immortality I care about.”

“I’m a magician who writes about ideas. I’m not a science-fiction writer. People who call me that are wrong. Most of what I write is fantasy or magic realism or plays about my Mexican-American background.”

“I am the dreamer and the doer
I the hearer and the knower
I the giver and the taker
I the sword and the wound of sword.
If this be true, then let sword fall free from hand.
I embrace myself.
I laugh until I weep
And weep until I smile…”

“Man warring on himself an old tale is;
But Man discovering the source of all his sorrow in himself,
Finding his left hand and his right
Are similar sons, are children fighting
In the porchyards of the void?!”

“Why have you been so blind?
Why have you never seen?
The slave and master in one skin
Is all your history, no more, no less,
Confess! This is what you've been.”