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His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.
-Ray Bradbury
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His Flesh Took Paleness

Ray Bradbury
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His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

Understanding the Quote: "his flesh took paleness from his bones...."

This quote by Ray Bradbury reflects deeply on the theme of flesh. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Flesh, Bones, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Ray Bradbury interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is celebrated for insightful thoughts on flesh and bones. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Flesh
Bones
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Friendship Is An Island That You Retreat To And You All Fall On The Floor And Laugh At All The Other Ninnies That Don't Have Enough Brains To Have Your Good Taste.
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The Only Science Fiction I Have Written Is Fahrenheit 451. It's The Art Of The Possible. Science Fiction Is The Art Of The Possible. It Could Happen. It Has Happened.
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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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But No Man's A Hero To Himself. I've Lived With Me A Lifetime. I Know Everything Worth Knowing About Myself--" ~something Wicked This Way Comes
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The Things That You Do Should Be Things That You Love, And Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.
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Everyone Has A Telephone. Whether They Can Afford It Or Not. It's One Of Those Things That People Have, Regardless Of Their Income.
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You Can’t Learn To Write In College. It’s A Very Bad Place For Writers Because The Teachers Always Think They Know More Than You Do-and They Don’t. They Have Prejudices.
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I Am Not A Science Fiction Writer. I Am A Fantasy Writer. But The Label Got Put On Me And Stuck.
Labels
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Halloween. Sly Does It. Tiptoe Catspaws. Slide And Creep. But Why? What For? How? Who? When! Where Did It All Begin? 'you Don't Know, Do You?' Asks Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud Climbing Out Under The Pile Of Leaves Under The Halloween Tree. 'you Don't Really Know!'
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When I Graduated From High School, It Was During The Depression And We Had No Money.
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You Can’t Learn To Write In College. It’s A Very Bad Place For Writers Because The Teachers Always Think They Know More Than You Do—and They Don’t. They Have Prejudices. They May Like Henry James, But What If You Don’t Want To Write Like Henry James? They May Like John Irving, For Instance, Who’s The Bore Of All Time. A Lot Of The People Whose Work They’ve Taught In The Schools For The Last Thirty Years, I Can’t Understand Why People Read Them And Why They Are Taught.
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I Believe In Having Fun First, And Along The Way, If You Teach People, If You Influence People, Well And Good.
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Dad," Said Will, His Voice Very Faint. "are You A Good Person?" "to You And Your Mother, Yes, I Try. But No Man's A Hero To Himself. I've Lived With Me A Lifetime, Will. I Know Everything Worth Knowing About Myself-" "and, Adding It All Up...?" "the Sum? As They Come And Go, And I Mostly Sit Very Still And Tight, Yes, I'm All Right.
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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.
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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.
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Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.
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If You're Living In Your Time, You Cannot Help But To Write About The Things That Are Important.
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Blow
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Long
Coward
Way
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Fun
Moving
People
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Soul
Trying
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Way
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Burning
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Writing
Library
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Hate
Eye
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Crowds
Madness
The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time.
Sun
Fireman
Fahrenheit 451 Book
I Don't Know Anything Anymore
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Knows
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World
Fame
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Dark
Library
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Writing
Years
Poetry
I Got A Statistic For You Right Now. Grab Your Pencil, Doug. There Are Five Billion Trees In The World. I Looked It Up. Under Every Tree Is A Shadow, Right? So, Then, What Makes Night? I'll Tell You: Shadows Crawling Out From Under Five Billion Trees! Think Of It! Shadows Running Around In The Air, Muddying The Waters You Might Say. If Only We Could Figure A Way To Keep Those Darn Five Billion Shadows Under Those Trees, We Could Stay Up Half The Night, Doug, Because There'd Be No Night!
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Night
Thinking
Facts Are Not Interesting To Me.
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Facts
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.
Writing
Kids
Evil
How Long Has It Been Since You Wrote A Story Where Your Real Love Or Your Real Hatred Somehow Got Onto The Paper? When Was The Last Time You Dared Release A Cherished Prejudice So It Slammed The Page Like A Lightning Bolt?
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Long
Hatred
Those Who Live In The Best Cliffs Think They Are Better Than Us. That Is Always Man's Attitude When He Has Power.
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Men
Thinking
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Hydrogen Bomb
Ideas
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Writing
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If You Don't Like What You're Doing, Then Don't Do It.
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Eye
Soul
The Home Environment Can Undo A Lot You Try To Do At School.
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School
Trying
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Hollywood
Influence
Film
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Writing
Thinking
Beer's Intellectual. What A Shame So Many Idiots Drink It.
Drinking
Beer
Intellectual
Painting Fulfills A Need To Be Non-intellectual. There Are Times When We Have To Get Our Brains Out In Our Fingers.
Intellectual
Brain
Needs
I Am A Dedicated Madman, And That Becomes Its Own Training. If You Can't Resist, If The Typewriter Is Like Candy To You, You Train Yourself For A Lifetime. Every Single Day Of Your Life, Some Wild New Thing To Be Done. You Write To Please Yourself. You Write For The Joy Of Writing. Then Your Public Reads You And It Begins To Gather Around Your Selling A Potato Peeler In An Alley, You Know. The Enthusiasm, The Joy Itself Draws Me. So That Means Every Day Of My Life I've Written. When The Joy Stops, I'll Stop Writing.
Writing
Mean
Typewriters
I'm Being Ironic. Don't Interrupt A Man In The Midst Of Being Ironic, It's Not Polite. There!
Men
Ironic
Midst
And Suddenly Everything, Absolutely Everything, Was There.
Our Civilization Is Flinging Itself To Pieces. Stand Back From The Centrifuge.
Civilization
Pieces
My Gosh, If You’re Going Away, We Got A Million Things To Talk About! All The Things We Would’ve Talked About Next Month, The Month After! Praying Mantises, Zeppelins, Acrobats, Sword Swallowers!
Going Away
Next
Months
I Often Wonder If God Recognizes His Own Son The Way We've Dressed Him Up, Or Is It Dressed Him Down?
Son
Peppermint
Way
We Meet On The Common Ground Of An Uncommon Age And Share Out Our Gifts Of Dark And Light, Good And Bad, Simple Joy And Not So Simple Sorrow.
Dark
Simple
Light
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.
Goes On
Edges
Looking Back
Evil Has Only The Power We Give It.
Evil
Giving
My Parents Read The Comics To Me, And I Fell In Love With Comic Strips. I've Collected Them All Of My Life. I Have A Complete Collection Of All The "buck Rogers" Sunday Funnies And Daily Paper Strips, I Have All Of "prince Valiant" Put Away, All Of "tarzan," Which Appeared In The Sunday Funnies In 1932 Right On Up Through High School. So I've Learned A Lot From Reading Comics As A Child.
Children
Reading
School
When I Was A Young Man, I Didn't Think About Having A Family. My Wife And I Were Too Poor To Have Babies. Then All Of A Sudden, One Came Along And Scared The Hell Out Of Us Because We Had No Money. Once The Baby Arrives, You Make Do Somehow. You Fall In Love With The Baby And Life Adjusts Itself. You Find You Don't Need As Much Money As You Thought. When That Happens, You Can Ask The Questions That Should Have Come Before The Baby.
Baby
Falling In Love
Parenting
I'm Not In Control Of My Muse. My Muse Does All The Work.
Doe
Muse
Write A Short Story Every Week. It's Not Possible To Write 52 Bad Short Stories In A Row.
Writing
Stories
Week
We're Going To Become The Martians When We Land There. When We Explore And Build Communities, We Become The Martians. That's A Wonderful Destiny For All Of Us.
Destiny
Land
Community
I'll Hold On To The World Tight Some Day. I've Got One Finger On It Now; That's A Beginning.
World
Fingers
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.
Animal
Laughing
Choices
I'm Trying To Teach People Of All Ages To, Number One: How To Criticize, How To Offer Creative Analysis On Top Of That, How To Try To Build Things In A New Direction And How To Compliment People When The Thing Gets Done.
Numbers
People
Creative
You're Either In Love With What You Do, Or You're Not In Love.
A Conglomerate Heap Of Trash, That's What I Am. But It Burns With A High Flame.
Hilarious
Flames
Trash
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.
Teacher
Giving
Speak
I Think The Sun Is A Flower, That Blooms For Just One Hour.
Flower
Thinking
Sun
And I Saw Then And There You Take A Man Half-bad And A Women Half-bad And Put Their Two Good Halves Together And You Got One Human All Good To Share Between.
Men
Two
Together
Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.
Stories
Fantasy
Short Story
Remember, The Firemen Are Rarely Necessary. The Public Itself Stopped Reading Of Its Own Accord.
Reading
Remember
Fireman
Action Is Hope. At The End Of Each Day, When You've Done Your Work, You Lie There And Think, Well, I'll Be Damned, I Did This Today. It Doesn't Matter How Good It Is, Or How Bad-you Did It. At The End Of The Week You'll Have A Certain Amount Of Accumulation. At The End Of A Year, You Look Back And Say, I'll Be Damned, It's Been A Good Year.
Lying
Thinking
Years
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."
Hands
Answers
Mystery
I've Never Been In Charge Of My Stories, They've Always Been In Charge Of Me. As Each New One Has Called To Me, Ordering Me To Give It Voice And Form And Life, I've Followed The Advice I've Shared With Other Writers Over The Years: Jump Off The Cliff And Build Your Wings On The Way Down.
Years
Wings
Voice
We Can't Live Alone In Any Society. But The Best Way To Help A Society Or Group, Is To Be The Best Individual In It That We Can Be.
Way
Groups
Helping
I'm Seventeen And I'm Crazy. My Uncle Says The Two Always Go Together. When People Ask Your Age, He Said, Always Say Seventeen And Insane.
Uncles
Crazy
Two
I'm Not Anyone, I'm Just Myself; Whatever I Am, I Am Something, And Now I'm Something You Can't Help.
Helping
Martian Chronicles
How Working For The Wrong Motives Poisons Our Creativity And Warps Our Ideas Of Success And Failure.
Writing
Creativity
Ideas
Those Women Like To See Their Tongues Dance.
Tongue
I Want To Hold Onto This Funny Thing. God, It's Gotten Big On Me. I Don't Know What It Is. I'm So Damned Unhappy, I'm So Mad, And I Don't Know Why. I Feel Like I'm Putting On Weight. I Feel Fat. I Feel Like I'm Saving A Lot Of Things, And I Don't Know What. I Might Even Start Reading Books.
Book
Reading
Funny Things
Is It True, The World Works Hard And We Play? Is That Why We're Hated So Much?
Hard Work
Play
World
We Are The Miracle Of Force And Matter Making Itself Over Into Imagination And Will.
Imagination
Miracle
Matter
Writing Can Be Described In Two Verbs: Throw Up And Clean Up.
Writing
Two
Verbs
And Some Days, He Went On, Were Days Of Hearing Every Trump And Trill Of The Universe. Some Days Were Good For Tasting And Some For Touching. And Some Days Were Good For All The Senses At Once. This Day Now, He Nodded, Smelled As If A Great And Nameless Orchard Had Grown Up Overnight Beyond The Hills To Fill The Entire Visible Land With Its Warm Freshness. The Air Felt Like Rain, But There Were No Clouds.
Rain
Land
Clouds
Today We Haved Touched Mars. There Is Life On Mars, And It Us Us-extensions Of Our Eyes In All Directions, Extensions Of Our Mind, Extensions Of Our Heart And Soul Have Touched Mars Today. That's The Message To Look For There: We Are On Mars. We Are The Martians!
Heart
Eye
Soul
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.
Book
Reading
Ignorance
What's The Point Of Having A Library Full Of Books You've Already Read?
Book
Library
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.
War
Remember
Someday
The Purpose Of Fiction Is Not To Nail You To The Ground As Facts Do, But To Take You To The Edge Of The Cliff And Kick You Off So You Build Your Wings On The Way Down.
Wings
Fiction
Way
We Should Have Stayed On The Moon. We Should Have Made Moon The Base, Instead Of Building Space Stations, Which Are Fragile And Which Fly Apart.
Moon
Should Have
Space
Ours Is A Culture And A Time Immensely Rich In Trash As It Is In Treasures.
Writing
Culture
Treasure
Reality And Fiction Are Different In That Fiction Has To Make Sense.
Reality
Different
Fiction
Not To Write, For Many Of Us, Is To Die. We Must Take Ares Each And Every Day, Perhaps Knowing That The Battle Cannot Be Entirely Won, But Fight We Must, If Only A Gentle Bout. The Smallest Effort To Win Means, At The End Of Each Day, A Sort Of Victory.
Writing
Mean
Fighting
...passing Swiftly On Toward Further Darknesses, But Moving Also Toward A New Sun.
Moving
Darkness
Sun
When You're Older You Want To Learn From Other People.
People
Want
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.
Philosophical
Thinking
Men
Please, Please, Help Me Grow To Be Like Them, The Ones'll Soon Be Here, Who Never Grow Old, Can't Die, That's What They Say, Can't Die, No Matter What, Or Maybe They Died A Long Time Ago But Cecy Calls, And Mother And Father Call, And Grandmere Who Only Whispers, And Now They're Coming And I'm Nothing, Not Like Them Who Pass Through Walls And Live In Trees Or Live Underneath Until Seventeen-year Rains Flood Them Up And Out, And The Ones Who Run In Packs, Let Me Be The One! If They Live Forever, Why Not Me?
Mother
Running
Wall
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.
Night
Glasses
Mirrors
What Can We Writers Learn From Lizards, Lift From Birds? In Quickness Is Truth. The Faster You Blurt, The More Swiftly You Write, The More Honest You Are. In Hesitation Is Thought. In Delay Comes The Effort For A Style, Instead Of Leaping Upon Truth Which Is The Only Style Worth Deadfalling Or Tiger-trapping.
Writing
Effort
Bird
I Started Writing Every Day. I Never Stopped.
Writing
Writing Every Day
Let The World Burn Through You. Throw The Prism Light, White Hot, On Paper.
Writing
Light
White
I Want To Feel All There Is To Feel, He Thought. Let Me Feel Tired, Now, Let Me Feel Tired. I Mustn't Forget, I'm Alive, I Know I'm Alive, I Mustn't Forget It Tonight Or Tomorrow Or The Day After That.
Life
Tired
Tonight
Science Fiction Is Really Sociological Studies Of The Future, Things That The Writer Believes Are Going To Happen By Putting Two And Two Together.
Believe
Two
Together
I Don't Like Being Up High. It Took Me Three Days To Get To The Top Of The Eiffel Tower.
Three
Towers
Eiffel Tower
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