Ray Bradbury cytaty

strona 8

„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.”

“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.”

“Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day.”

“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.”

“We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.”

“The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water…. The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water….”

“And metaphors like cats behind your smile,
Each one wound up to purr,
each one a pride,
Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (…)”

“We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe”

“We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.”

“Coloured people don't like. Burn it. White people don't feel good about. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.”

“A Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time,” she said. “I was born out of New York. The things that are most wrong here summoned me. ("Drink Entire: Against The Madness Of Crowds")”

“Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?'
'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”

“From the outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living.”

“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.”

“Out of the nursery into the college and back into the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.”

“I have three rules to live by: Get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin, and when all else fails, run like hell.”

“I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously."

[(Robert Jacobs,, February 1976)]”

“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered… sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks…”

“Kerosene," he said, because the silence had lengthened, "is nothing but perfume to me.”

“People don't talk about anything… No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.”

“I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?”

“You take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you [our son].”

“Will we ever stop being afraid of nights and death?

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

“I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.”

“I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it's immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it.”