Quotes By Author: Ray Bradbury

“the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time.”

“The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill. Shake down all the grains of Time—the big grains of centuries, and the small grains of years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes—and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all directions in a fine pollen, carried by cold winds to blanket the town like dust, everywhere. Spores from that clock lodged in your flesh to wrinkle it, to grow bones to monstrous size, to burst feet from shoes like turnips. Oh, how that great machine…dispensed Time in blowing weathers.”

“The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.”

“I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I’ve got what amounts to a religion now. It’s learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how to hear music and how to read a book. What does your civilization offer?”

“Yell. Jump. Play. Out-run those sons-of-bitches. They’ll never live the way you live. Go do it.”

“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.”

“The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

“It is a lie to write in such way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary groups in the intellectual gazettes.”

“Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the gods.”

“We all are rich and ignore the buried fact of accumulated wisdom.”

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

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

“On doit tous être pareils. Nous ne naissons pas libres et égaux, comme le proclame la Constitution, on nous rend égaux. Chaque homme doit être l’image de l’autre, comme ça, tout le monde est content; plus de montagnes pour les intimider, leur donner un point de comparaison. Conclusion ! Un livre est un fusil chargé dans la maison d’à côté. Brûlons-le. Déchargeons l’arme. Battons en brèche l’esprit humain. Qui sait qui pourrait être la cible de l’homme cultivé ?”

“Il sentit son corps se scinder en deux, devenir chaleur et froidure, tendresse et dureté, tremblement et impassibilité, chaque moitié grinçant contre l’autre.”

“Après tout, on vit à l’époque des Kleenex. On fait avec les gens comme avec les mouchoirs, on froisse après usage, on jette, on en prend un autre, on se mouche, on froisse, on jette. Tout le monde se sert des basques du voisin.”