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For John Was Running, And This Was Terrible. Because If You Ran, Time Ran. You Yelled And Screamed And Raced And Rolled And Tumbled And All Of A Sudden The Sun Was Gone And The Whistle Was Blowing And You Were On Your Long Way Home To Supper. When You Weren't Looking, The Sun Got Around Behind You! The Only Way To Keep Things Slow Was To Watch Everything And Do Nothing! You Could Stretch A Day To Three Days, Sure, Just By Watching!

-Ray Bradbury

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For John Was Running,

Ray Bradbury

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For John Was Running, And This Was Terrible. Because If You Ran, Time Ran. You Yelled And Screamed And Raced And Rolled And Tumbled And All Of A Sudden The Sun Was Gone And The Whistle Was Blowing And You Were On Your Long Way Home To Supper. When You Weren't Looking, The Sun Got Around Behind You! The Only Way To Keep Things Slow Was To Watch Everything And Do Nothing! You Could Stretch A Day To Three Days, Sure, Just By Watching!

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I'll Tell You," Said Beatty, Smiling At His Cards. "that Made You For A Little While A Drunkard. Read A Few Lines And Off You Go Over The Cliff. Bang, You're Ready To Blow Up The World, Chop Off Heads, Knock Down Women And Children, Destroy Authority. I Know. I've Been Through It All.

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Oh God, The Terrible Tyranny Of The Majority. We All Have Our Harps To Play. And It's Up To You To Know With Which Ear You'll Listen.

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Suddenly The Day Was Gone, Night Came Out From Under Each Tree And Spread.

Night Had Come On Like The Closing Of A Great But Gentle Eye.

We Have Everything We Need To Be Happy, But We Aren't Happy. Something's Missing.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

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.

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This Is The Result Of Six Billion Years Of Evolution. Tonight, We Have Given The Lie To Gravity.we Have Reached For The Stars.

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The Automobile Is The Most Dangerous Weapon In Our Society - Cars Kill More Than Wars Do.

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If You Know How To Read, You Have A Complete Education About Life, Then You Know How To Vote Within A Democracy. But If You Don't Know How To Read, You Don't Know How To Decide. That's The Great Thing About Our Country - We're A Democracy Of Readers, And We Should Keep It That Way.

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Love Is The Answer To Everything. It's The Only Reason To Do Anything.

The Things That You Do Should Be Things That You Love, And Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.

The Train Skimmed On Softly, Slithering, Black Pennants Fluttering, Black Confetti Lost On Its Own Sick-sweet Candy Wind, Down The Hill, With The Two Boys Pursuing, The Air Was So Cold They Ate Ice Cream With Each Breath.

When You Reach The Stars, Boy, Yes, And Live There Forever, All The Fears Will Go, And Death Himself Will Die.

I’m The Thing You Most Desire, You Represent The Thing I Least Desire, Death. It’s Just The Opposite Of Love.

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A Book Has Got To Smell. You Have To Hold It In Your Hands And Pray To It.

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We've Got To Reinvest In Space Travel. We Should Have Never Left The Moon.

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The Home Environment Can Undo A Lot You Try To Do At School.

With School Turning Out More Runners, Jumpers, Racers, Tinkerers, Grabbers, Snatchers, Fliers, And Swimmers Instead Of Examiners, Critics, Knowers, And Imaginative Creators, The Word 'intellectual,' Of Course, Became The Swear Word It Deserved To Be.

You Should Love Literature. You Should Live In The Library. Forget About Films.

The Ability To Fantasize Is The Ability To Survive, And The Ability To Fantasize Is The Ability To Grow

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I Feel I'm Doing What I Should've Done A Lifetime Ago. For A Little While I'm Not Afraid. Maybe It's Because I'm Doing The Right Thing At Last. Maybe It's Because I've Done A Rash Thing And Don't Want To Look The Coward To You.

I Know You've Heard It A Thousand Times Before. But It's True - Hard Work Pays Off. If You Want To Be Good, You Have To Practice, Practice, Practice. If You Don't Love Something, Then Don't Do It.

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And Some Day Well Remember So Much That Well Build The Biggest Goddam Steamshovel In History And Dig The Biggest Grave Of All Time And Shove War In And Cover It Up.

The Rockets Set The Bony Meadows Afire, Turned Rock To Lava, Turned Wood To Charcoal, Transmuted Water To Steam, Made Sand And Silica Into Green Glass Which Lay Like Shattered Mirrors Reflecting The Invasion, All About. The Rockets Came Like Drums, Beating In The Night. The Rockets Came Like Locusts, Swarming And Settling In Blooms Of Rosy Smoke.

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Zest. Gusto. How Rarely One Hears These Words Used. How Rarely Do We See People Living, Or For That Matter, Creating, By Them. Yet If I Were Asked To Name The Most Important Items In A Writer's Make-up, The Things That Shape His Material And Rush Him Along The Road He Wants To Go. I Would Only Warn Him To Look To His Zest, See To His Gusto.

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Inspiration To Write

I Don't Know Anything Anymore

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...passing Swiftly On Toward Further Darknesses, But Moving Also Toward A New Sun.

I Never Went To College, So I Went To The Library.

You've Been Put On The World To Love The Act Of Being Alive.

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.

A Book Is A Loaded Gun.

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If You Learn Only Methods, You'll Be Tied To Your Methods, But If You Learn Principles You Can Devise Your Own Methods.

That's Life For You," Said Macdunn. "someone Always Waiting For Someone Who Never Comes Home. Always Someone Loving Some Thing More Than That Thing Loves Them. And After A While You Want To Destroy Whatever That Thing Is, So It Can't Hurt You No More.

Now Let's Take Up The Minorities In Our Civilisation, Shall We? Bigger The Population, The More Minorities. Don't Step On The Toes Of The Dog-lovers, The Cat-lovers, Doctors, Lawyers, Merchants, Chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, Second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, People From Oregon Or Mexico. The People In This Book, This Play, This Tv Serial Are Not Meant To Represent Any Actual Painters, Cartographers, Mechanics Anywhere. The Bigger Your Market, Montag, The Less You Handle Controversy, Remember That!

A Stranger Is Shot In The Street, You Hardly Move To Help. But If, Half An Hour Before, You Spent Just Ten Minutes With The Fellow And Knew A Little About Him And His Family, You Might Just Jump In Front Of His Killer And Try To Stop It. 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.

The Greek Philosophies Teach Us That We Are A Combination Of Dark And Light, Good And Evil, And Murderer And Savior, Hmm? And Until We Know This Completely About Ourselves We Cannot Love Well, And We Cannot Forgive Ourselves.

The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is Know Who You Are.

If You Write A Hundred Short Stories And They're All Bad, That Doesn't Mean You've Failed. You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

He Glanced Back At The Wall. How Like A Mirror, Too, Her Face. Impossible; For How Many People Did You Know Who Reflected Your Own Light To You? People Were More Often--he Searched For A Simile, Found One In His Work--torches, Blazing Away Until They Whiffed Out. How Rarely Did Other People's Faces Take Of You And Throw Back To You Your Own Expression, Your Own Innermost Trembling Thought?

Sometimes You Just Have To Jump Out The Window And Grow Wings On The Way Down.

Just Write Every Day Of Your Life. Read Intensely. Then See What Happens. Most Of My Friends Who Are Put On That Diet Have Very Pleasant Careers.

I Write All Of My Novels And Stories, As You Have Seen, In A Great Surge Of Delightful Passion. Only Recently, Glancing At The Novel, I Realized That Montag Is Named After A Paper Manufacturing Company. And Faber, Of Course, Is A Maker Of Pencils! What A Sly Thing My Subconscious Was, To Name Them Thus. And Not Tell Me!

Life Is Like Underwear, Should Be Changed Twice A Day.

I've Written About 2,000 Short Stories; I've Only Published 300 And I Feel I'm Still Learning. Any Man Who Keeps Working Is Not A Failure. He May Not Be A Great Writer, But If He Applies The Old Fashioned Virtues Of Hard, Constant Labor, He'll Eventually Make Some Kind Of Career For Himself As A Writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 Interview (doing The Math - That Means For Every Story He Sold, He Wrote Six "un-publishable" Ones. Keep Typing!)

That's The Great Secret Of Creativity. You Treat Ideas Like Cats: You Make Them Follow You.

My Stories Run Up And Bite Me On The Leg - I Respond By Writing Down Everything That Goes On During The Bite. When I Finish, The Idea Lets Go And Runs Off.

If You Stuff Yourself Full Of Poems, Essays, Plays, Stories, Novels, Films, Comic Strips, Magazines, Music, You Automatically Explode Every Morning Like Old Faithful. I Have Never Had A Dry Spell In My Life, Mainly Because I Feed Myself Well, To The Point Of Bursting. I Wake Early And Hear My Morning Voices Leaping Around In My Head Like Jumping Beans. I Get Out Of Bed To Trap Them Before They Escape.

For About 150 Days A Year In Venice, The Sun Doesn't Show Through The Mist Until Noon.

You Don't Have To Burn Books To Destroy A Culture. Just Get People To Stop Reading Them.

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.

Important Thing Is Not The Me That's Lying Here, But The Me That's Sitting On The Edge Of The Bed Looking Back At Me, And The Me That's Downstairs Cooking Supper, Or Out In The Garage Under The Car, Or In The Library Reading. All The New Parts, They Count. I'm Not Really Dying Today. No Person Ever Died That Had A Family.

Orwell Was Dealing With Communism And His Disillusionment With Communism In Russia And What He Saw The Communists Do In Spain. His Novel Was A Response To Those Political Situations. Whereas I Was Interested In More Things Than The Political Atmosphere. I Was Considering The Whole Social Atmosphere: The Impact Of Tv And Radio And The Lack Of Education. I Could See The Coming Event Of Schoolteachers Not Teaching Reading Anymore. The Less They Taught, The More You Wouldn't Need Books.

Don’t Worry About Things. Don’t Push. Just Do Your Work And You’ll Survive. The Important Thing Is To Have A Ball, To Be Joyful, To Be Loving And To Be Explosive. Out Of That Comes Everything And You Grow.

That's The Wonderful Thing About Man; He Never Gets So Discouraged Or Disgusted That He Gives Up Doing It All Over Again, Because He Knows Very Well It Is Important And Worth The Doing.

What Is It About Fire That's So Lovely? No Matter What Age We Are, What Draws Us To It?...the Thing Man Wanted To Invent, But Never Did...if You Let It Go On, It'd Burn Our Lifetimes Out. What Is Fire? It Is A Mystery. Scientists Give Us Gobbledygook About Friction And Molecules. But They Don't Really Know. Its Real Beauty Is That It Destroys Responsibility And Consequences.

These Are All Novels, All About People That Never Existed, The People That Read Them It Makes Them Unhappy With Their Own Lives. Makes Them Want To Live In Other Ways They Can Never Really Be.

You Knew The Sweetness Of Now, Now, Tonight! Who Cares For Tomorrow, Tomorrow Is Nothing, Yesterday Is Over And Done, Tonight Live, Tonight!

Ideas And Philosophies Change Just As Machines Do. Religions Changed Because Of The Birth Control Pill. Politics Changes Because Of The Hydrogen Bomb. All Because Of Science Fictional Inventions.

Remember, Montag, We're The Happiness Boys. We Stand Against The Small Tide Of Those Who Want To Make Everyone Unhappy With Conflicting Theory And Thought.

That's The Good Part Of Dying; When You've Nothing To Lose, You Run Any Risk You Want.

I Believe In Libraries Because Most Students Don't Have Any Money.

We Travel, Initially, To Lose Ourselves, And We Travel, Next, To Find Ourselves. We Travel To Open Our Hearts And Eyes. And We Travel, In Essence, To Become Young Fools Again—to Slow Time Down And Get Taken In, And Fall In Love Once More.

Falling In Love

This Was All He Wanted Now. Some Signs That The Immense World Would Accept Him And Give Him The Long Time He Needed To Think All The Things That Must Be Thought.

But Souls Can't Be Sold. They Can Only Be Lost And Never Found Again.

Putting Out The Stars And Extinguishing The Sun.

..holding A Book But Reading The Empty Spaces.

Painting Fulfills A Need To Be Non-intellectual. There Are Times When We Have To Get Our Brains Out In Our Fingers.

Man Has Always Been Half-monster, Half-dreamer.

Everything Of Mine Is Permeated With My Love Of Ideas-both Big And Small. It Doesn't Matter What It Is, As Long As It Grabs Me And Holds Me, Facinates Me. And Then I'll Run Out And Something About It... I Write For Fun.

I Discovered Very Early On That If You Wanted A Thing, You Went For It - And You Got It. Most People Never Go Anywhere, Or Want Anything - So They Never Get Anything.

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

I Like To Watch People. Sometimes I Ride The Subway All Day And Look At Them And Listen To Them. I Just Want To Figure Out Who They Are And What They Want And Where They're Going.

Digression Is The Soul Of Wit.

The Most Improbable Tales Can Be Made Believable, If Your Reader, Through His Sense, Feels Certain That He Stands At The Middle Of Events.

I Don't Like Realism. We Already Know The Real Facts About Li[fe], Most Of The Basic Facts. I'm Not Interested In Repeating What We Already Know. We Know About Sex, About Violence, About Murder, About War. All These Things, By The Time We're 18, We're Up To Here. From There On We Need Interpreters. We Need Poets. We Need Philosophers. We Need Theologians, Who Take The Same Basic Facts And Work With Them And Help Us Make Do With Those Facts. Facts Alone Are Not Enough. It's Interpretation.

People Ask Me To Predict The Future, When All I Want To Do Is Prevent It.

It's Not Going To Do Any Good To Land On Mars If We're Stupid.

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")

Every Time You Take A Step, Even When You Don't Want To. . . . When It Hurts, When It Means You Rub Chins With Death, Or Even If It Means Dying, That's Good. Anything That Moves Ahead, Wins. No Chess Game Was Ever Won By The Player Who Sat For A Lifetime Thinking Over His Next Move.

Libraries Are Absolutely At The Center Of My Life. Since I Couldn't Afford To Go To College, I Attended The Library Three Or Four Days A Week From The Age Of Eighteen On, And Graduated From The Library When I Was Twenty-eight.

Not To Write, For Many Of Us, Is To Die.

One Year Halloween Came On October 24, Three Hours After Midnight. At That Time, James Nightshade Of 97 Oak Street Was Thirteen Years, Eleven Months, Twenty-three Days Old. Next Door, William Halloway Was Thirteen Years, Eleven Months, And Twenty-four Days Old. Both Touched Toward Fourteen; It Almost Trembled In Their Hands. And That Was The October Week When They Grew Up Overnight, And Were Never So Young Any More.

Why All This Insistence On The Senses? Because In Order To Convince Your Reader That He Is There, You Must Assault Each Of His Senses, In Turn, With Color, Sound, Taste, And Texture. If Your Reader Feels The Sun On His Flesh, The Wind Fluttering His Shirt Sleeves, Half Your Fight Is Won. The Most Improbable Tales Can Be Made Believable, If Your Reader, Through His Senses, Feels Certain That He Stands At The Middle Of Events. He Cannot Refuse, Then, To Participate. The Logic Of Events Always Gives Way To The Logic Of The Senses.

The Magic Is Only In What Books Say, How They Stitched The Patches Of The Universe Together Into One Garment For Us.

I Ate Them Like Salad, Books Were My Sandwich For Lunch, My Tiffin And Dinner And Midnight Munch. I Tore Out The Pages, Ate Them With Salt, Doused Them With Relish, Gnawed On The Bindings, Turned The Chapters With My Tongue! Books By The Dozen, The Score And The Billion. I Carried So Many Home I Was Hunchbacked For Years. Philosophy, Art History, Politics, Social Science, The Poem, The Essay, The Grandiose Play, You Name 'em, I Ate 'em.

Let The World Burn Through You. Throw The Prism Light, White Hot, On Paper.

Teachers Are To Inspire; Librarians Are To Fulfill.

And Besides, I Like To Cry. After I Cry Hard It's Like It's Morning Again And I'm Starting The Day Over.

The First Thing A Writer Should Be Is - Excited. He Should Be A Thing Of Fevers And Enthusiasms. Without Such Vigor, He Might As Well Be Out Picking Peaches Or Digging Ditches; God Knows It'd Be Better For His Health.

The Local Tv News Is The Greatest Danger In Your Life. It's All Crap.

Work Is The Only Answer. I Have Three Rules To Live By. One, Get Your Work Done. If That Doesn't Work, Shut Up And Drink Your Gin. And When All Else Fails, Run Like Hell!

Rules To Live By

There Is No Future For E-books, Because They Are Not Books. E-books Smell Like Burned Fuel.

Ideas Excite Me, And As Soon As I Get Excited, The Adrenaline Gets Going And The Next Thing I Know I'm Borrowing Energy From The Ideas Themselves.

You Will Have To Write And Put Away Or Burn A Lot Of Material Before You Are Comfortable In This Medium. You Might As Well Start Now And Get The Work Done. For I Believe That Eventually Quantity Will Make For Quality.

We Have Everything We Need To Be Happy But We Aren't Happy. Something Is Missing... It Is Not Books You Need, It's Some Of The Things That Are In Books. The Magic Is Only In What Books Say, How They Stitched The Patches Of The Universe Together Into One Garment For Us.

Find Out What Your Hero Or Heroine Wants, And When He Or She Wakes Up In The Morning, Just Follow Him Or Her All Day.

The Only Good Writing Is Intuitive Writing. It Would Be A Big Bore If You Knew Where It Was Going. It Has To Be Exciting, Instantaneous And It Has To Be A Surprise. Then It All Comes Blurting Out And It’s Beautiful. I’ve Had A Sign By My Typewriter For 25 Years Now Which Reads, ‘don’t Think!’

I Hate All Politics. I Don't Like Either Political Party. One Should Not Belong To Them - One Should Be An Individual, Standing In The Middle. Anyone That Belongs To A Party Stops Thinking.

Do You Understand Now Why Books Are Hated And Feared? Because They Reveal The Pores On The Face Of Life. The Comfortable People Want Only The Faces Of The Full Moon, Wax, Faces Without Pores, Hairless, Expressionless.

I Was Doing A Terrible Thing In Using The Very Books You Clung To, To Rebut You On Every Hand, On Every Point! What Traitors Books Can Be! You Think They're Backing You Up, And Then They Turn On You. Others Can Use Them, Too, And There You Are, Lost In The Middle Of The Moor, In A Great Welter Of Nouns And Verbs And Adjectives.

The Merry-go-round Was Running, Yes, But... It Was Running Backward. The Small Calliope Inside The Carousel Machinery Rattle-snapped Its Nervous-stallion Shivering Drums, Clashed Its Harvest-moon Cymbals, Toothed Its Castanets, And Throatily Choked And Sobbed Its Reeds, Whistles, And Baroque Flutes.

Mr. Montag, You Are Looking At A Coward. I Saw The Way Things Were Going A Long Time Back. I Said Nothing. I Am One Of The Innocents Who Could Have Spoken Up And Out When No One Would Listen To The 'guilty,' But I Did Not Speak And Thus Became Guilty Myself.

Love Is Easy, And I Love Writing. You Can't Resist Love. You Get An Idea, Someone Says Something, And You're In Love.

Garrett," Said Stendahl, "do You Know Why I've Done This To You? Because You Burned Mr. Poe's Books Without Really Reading Them. You Took Other People's Advice That They Needed Burning. Otherwise You'd Have Realized What I Was Going To Do To You When We Came Down Here A Moment Ago. Ignorance Is Fatal, Mr. Garrett.

Old Men Only Lie In Wait For People To Ask Them To Talk. Then They Rattle On Like A Rusty Elevator Wheezing Up A Shaft.

In Science Fiction, We Dream. In Order To Colonize In Space, To Rebuild Our Cities, Which Are So Far Out Of Whack, To Tackle Any Number Of Problems, We Must Imagine The Future, Including The New Technologies That Are Required.

Creativity Is A Continual Surprise.

I'll Be Damned If Death Wears My Sadness For Glad Rags.

When You Grow Up In Science Fiction You Grow Up In Everything! It's The Greatest And Only Field Worth Growing Up In. It's The Total Field.

I Wake Up In The Morning And I Lie In Bed, And It's The Time I Call "the Theater Of Morning." All These Thoughts Run Around In My Head, Between My Ears When I'm Waking Up. It's Not A Dream State, But It's Not Completely Awake Either. So All These Metaphors Run Around And Then I Pick One And I Get Out Of Bed And I Do It. I'm Very Lucky.

All Flesh Is One: What Matter Scores; Or Color Of The Suit Or If The Helmet Glints With Blue Or Gold? All Is One Bold Achievement, All Is Fine Spring-found-again-in-autumn Day When Juices Run In Antelopes Along Our Blood, And Green Our Flag, Forever Green...

I'm Scared Of Myself. I Think I'd Be A Bad Driver. I'm Scared Of Cars, Period. I've Had Too Many Friends Killed Now, And I've Seen Too Many People Killed In My Life When I Drove Across The Country When I Was 12. I'm Sure That Has A Lot To Do With It. If You See A Few Real Dead Bodies With Brains On The Pavement, It Does A Lot To Change Your Attitude. It Means You Can Get It Too. I've Had A Lot Of Relatives Killed. I've Had A Lot Of Dear Friends Killed. It's Stupid. The Whole Activity Is Stupid.

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn. It's As Old As History And Juvenile Delinquents.

Everyone Must Leave Something Behind When He Dies, My Grandfather Said. A Child Or A Book Or A Painting Or A House Or A Wall Built Or A Pair Of Shoes Made. Or A Garden Planted. Something Your Hand Touched Some Way So Your Soul Has Somewhere To Go When You Die, And When People Look At That Tree Or That Flower You Planted, You're There.

Christ Is One Of The 'family' Now. I Often Wonder If God Recognizes His Own Son The Way We've Dressed Him Up, Or Is It Dressed Him Down? He's Regular Peppermint Stick Now, All Sugar Crystal And Saccharine - When He Isn't Making Veiled References To Certain Commercial Products That Ever Worshiper Absolutely Needs.

I Was Only Kicking Down The Christmas Tree To Get The Star On Top.

...we're Allotted A Little Space On Earth And That We Survive In That Wilderness That Can Take Back What It Has Given, As Easily As Blowing Its Breath On Us Or Sending The Sea To Tell Us We Are Not So Big. When We Forget How Close The Wilderness Is In The Night, My Grandpa Said, Someday It Will Come In And Get Us, For We Will Have Forgotten How Terrible And Real It Can Be.

Science Fiction Is Any Idea That Occurs In The Head And Doesn't Exist Yet, But Soon Will, And Will Change Everything For Everybody, And Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again. As Soon As You Have An Idea That Changes Some Small Part Of The World You Are Writing Science Fiction. It Is Always The Art Of The Possible, Never The Impossible.

If We Try To Deny The Darkness In Our Souls Then We'll Become Completely Dark.

Go Out And Make Your Own Speeches. People Need You. Go On Tv. It Can Be Done. After You Speak Up A Few Times, People Say, "hey, We Got A Crazy Man In The Community," And They'll Begin Talking To You.

Chock Them So ... Full Of "facts" They Feel Stuffed, But Absolutely "brilliant" With Information. Then They'll Feel They're Thinking, They'll Get A Sense Of Motion Without Moving.

Hold Summer In Your Hand, Pour Summer In A Glass, A Tiny Glass Of Course, The Smallest Tingling Sip, For Children; Change The Season In Your Veins By Raising Glass To Lip And Tilting Summer In.

We Must Move Into The Universe. Mankind Must Save Itself. We Must Escape The Danger Of War And Politics. We Must Become Astronauts And Go Out Into The Universe And Discover The God In Ourselves.

I'm Not Trying To Predict The Future. I'm Just Trying To Prevent It.

It's Poor Judgment', Said Grandpa 'to Call Anything By A Name. We Don't Know What A Hobgoblin Or A Vampire Or A Troll Is. Could Be Lots Of Things. You Can't Heave Them Into Categories With Labels And Say They'll Act One Way Or Another. That'd Be Silly. They're People. People Who Do Things. Yes, That's The Way To Put It. People Who *do* Things.

It Doesn't Matter What You Do...so Long As You Change Something From The Way It Was Before You Touched It Into Something That's Like You After You Take Your Hands Away.

I Would Not See Our Candle Blown Out In The Wind. It Is A Small Thing, This Dear Gift Of Life Handed Us Mysteriously Out Of Immensity. I Would Not Have That Gift Expire... If I Seem To Be Beating A Dead Horse Again And Again, I Must Protest: No! I Am Beating, Again And Again, Living Man To Keep Him Awake And Move His Limbs And Jump His Mind... What's The Use Of Looking At Mars Through A Telescope, Sitting On Panels, Writing Books, If It Isn't To Guarantee, Not Just The Survival Of Mankind, But Mankind Surviving Forever!

Science And Religion Have To Go Hand In Hand With The Mystery, Because There's A Certain Point Beyond Which You Say, "there Are No Answers."

They Walked Still Farther And The Girl Said, "is It True That Long Ago Firemen Put Fires Out Instead Of Going To Start Them?" No. Houses Have Always Been Fireproof, Take My Word For It." Strange. I Heard Once That A Long Time Ago Houses Used To Burn By Accident And They Needed Firemen To Stop The Flames.

Life Is About Trying Things To See If They Work.

Poverty Made A Sound Like A Wet Cough In The Shadows Of The Room.

What Are The Best Things And The Worst Things In Your Life, And When Are You Going To Get Around To Whispering Or Shouting Them?

He Had Never Liked October. Ever Since He Had First Lay In The Autumn Leaves Before His Grandmother's House Many Years Ago And Heard The Wind And Saw The Empty Trees. It Had Made Him Cry, Without A Reason. And A Little Of That Sadness Returned Each Year To Him. It Always Went Away With Spring. But, It Was A Little Different Tonight. There Was A Feeling Of Autumn Coming To Last A Million Years. There Would Be No Spring. ("the October Game")

If You Did Not Write Every Day, The Poisons Would Accumulate And You Would Begin To Die, Or Act Crazy Or Both-you Must Stay Drunk On Writing So Reality Cannot Destroy You.

I Wish You A Wrestling Match With Your Creative Muse That Will Last A Lifetime. ... I Wish Craziness And Foolishness And Madness Upon You. May You Live With Hysteria, And Out Of It Make Fine Stories - Science Fiction Or Otherwise. Which Finally Means, May You Be In Love Every Day For The Next 20,000 Days. And Out Of That Love, Remake A World.

Action Is Hope. There Is No Hope Without Action.

I've Been Writing Every Day Of My Life For 65 Years.

Writing Every Day

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