Ray Bradbury cytaty

strona 9

„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.”

“It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.”

“The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.”

“Books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out, silently, when put to the torch.”

“I'd like to know what a place iswhen I'm. I'd like to be.”

“There must me something in books, things we can't imagine.”

“Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents.”

“I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.”

“It was in their friendship they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow.”

“So in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do, depending on the season and the need.”

“Impossible; for how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you?”

“When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?”

“Are you happy?" she [Clarisse] said. "Am I what?" he [Montag] cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently.”

“Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.”

“Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.”

“Good to evil seems evil”

“He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.”

“There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.”

“It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.”

“A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.”

“You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead”

“You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet you're easy to forgive. You say you're seventeen?.. How odd. How strange. And my wife thirty and yet you seem so much older at times. I can't get over it.”

“Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.”

“Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don't they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadows are always longer.”

“Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!”

“It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book… it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt…”

“A computer does not smell… if a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better… And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.”

“Into the air, over the valleys, under the stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as new spring winds, fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew.”

“But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority”

“He says I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers.”