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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.

-Ray Bradbury

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I Am A Dedicated

Ray Bradbury

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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.

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The Major Networks, The Cable Networks, They're Being Prosecutors. They're Judges And Jurors And Executioners. Well, C'mon, That's Ridiculous. But They're Doing It.

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.

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.

I Went To Bed And Woke In The Middle Of The Night Thinking I Heard Someone Cry, Thinking I Myself Was Weeping, And I Felt My Face And It Was Dry. Then I Looked At The Window And Thought: Why, Yes, It's Just The Rain, The Rain, Always The Rain, And Turned Over, Sadder Still, And Fumbled About For My Dripping Sleep And Tried To Slip It Back On.

We Are The Miracle Of Force And Matter Making Itself Over Into Imagination And Will.

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

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.

But We Do Need A Breather. We Do Need Knowledge. And Perhaps In A Thousand Years We Might Pick Smaller Cliffs To Jump Off. The Books Are To Remind Us What Asses And Fools We Are. They’re Caesar’s Praetorian Guard, Whispering As The Parade Roars Down The Avenue, ‘remember, Caesar, Thou Art Mortal.’ Most Of Us Can’t Rush Around, Talk To Everyone, Know All The Cities Of The World, We Haven’t Time, Money Or That Many Friends. The Things You’re Looking For, Montag, Are In The World, But The Only Way The Average Chap Will Ever See Ninety-nine Per Cent Of Them Is In A Book.

A Book Is A Loaded Gun In The House Next Door...who Knows Who Might Be The Target Of The Well-read Man?

My Religion Encompasses All Religions. I Believe In God, I Believe In The Universe. I Believe You Are God, I Believe I Am God; I Believe The Earth Is God And The Universe Is God. We're All God.

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.

This Afternoon, Burn Down The House. Tomorrow, Pour Critical Water Upon The Simmering Coals. Time Enough To Think And Cut And Rewrite Tomorrow. But Today-explode-f Ly-apart-disint Egrate! The Other Six Or Seven Drafts Are Going To Be Pure Torture. So Why Not Enjoy The First Draft, In The Hope That Your Joy Will Seek And Find Others In The World Who, By Reading Your Story, Will Catch Fire, Too?

People Try To Force Things. It's Disastrous. Just Leave Your Mind Alone. Your Intuition Knows What It Wants To Write, So Get Out Of The Way.

Sniff Books Like Perfumes And Wear Books Like Hats Upon Your Crazy Heads.

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.

And When He Died, I Suddenly Realized I Wasn't Crying For Him At All, But For The Things He Did. I Cried Because He Would Never Do Them Again.

You Learn To Live With Your Crazy Enthusiasms Which Nobody Else Shares, And Then You Find A Few Other Nuts Like Yourself, And They're Your Friends For A Lifetime. That's What Friends Are, The People Who Share Your Crazy Outlook And Protect You From The World, Because Nobody Else Is Going To Give A Damn What You're Doing, So You Need A Few Other People Like Yourself.

In Our Time The Search For Extraterrestrial Life Will Eventually Change Our Laws, Our Religions, Our Philosophies, Our Arts, Our Recreations, As Well As Our Sciences. Space, The Mirror, Waits For Life To Come Look For Itself There.

Don’t Think. Thinking Is The Enemy Of Creativity.

I'm Not A Serious Person, And I Don't Like Serious People.

Since Everything Is But An Apparition, Having Nothing To Do With Good Or Bad, Acceptance Or Rejection, One May Well Burst Out In Laughter. Longchenpa Let's Stuff Our Eyes With Wonder, Let's Live As If We'd Drop Dead In Ten Seconds. Let's See The World. It's More Fantastic Than Any Dream Made Or Paid For In Factories.

A Reason I Became A Writer Was To Escape The Hopelessness And Despair Of The Real World And Enter The World Of Hope I Could Create With My Imagination.

Don't Ask For Guarantees. And Don't Look To Be Saved In Any One Thing, Person, Machine, Or Library. Do Your Own Bit Of Saving, And If You Drown, At Least Die Knowing You Were Heading For Shore.

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

How To Feel Your Way Toward Something Honest, Hidden Under The Trapdoor On The Top Of Your Skull.

Comic Strips Introduced Me To Metaphors. They Are Pure Metaphor, So You Learn How To Tell A Story With Symbols, Which Is A Very Valuable Thing To Learn. And I Learned That From Motion Pictures, Too, And From Poetry. Poetry Is Mainly Metaphor. If It Doesn't Have A Metaphor, It Doesn't Work.

When I Was A Young Writer If You Went To A Party And Told Somebody You Were A Science-fiction Writer You Would Be Insulted. They Would Call You Flash Gordon All Evening, Or Buck Rogers.

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

Don’t Let People Interfere With You. Boot ’em Out, Turn Off The Phone, Hide Away, Get It Done. If You Carry A Short Story Over To The Next Day You May Overnight Intellectualize Something About It And Try To Make It Too Fancy, Try To Please Someone.

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.

Here At This Far Lost End Of The Continent, Where The Trail Wagons Had Stopped And The People With Them.

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.

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.

A Life's Work Should Be Based On Love.

Science Fiction Is Really Sociological Studies Of The Future, Things That The Writer Believes Are Going To Happen By Putting Two And Two Together.

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.

"that's Sad," Said Montag, Quietly, "because All We Put Into It Is Hunting And Finding And Killing. What A Shame If That's All It Can Ever Know."

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

Maybe The Books Can Get Us Half Out Of The Cave. They Just Might Stop Us From Making The Same Damm Insane Mistakes!

I Like To Smell Things And Look At Things, And Sometimes Stay Up All Night, Walking, And Watch The Sun Rise.

But With The Library, It's Like Catnip, I Suppose: You Begin To Run In Circles Because There's So Much To Look At And Read.

You're Insane!" "i Won't Argue That Point.

Every Morning I Jump Out Of Bed And Step On A Landmine. The Landmine Is Me. After The Explosion, I Spent The Rest Of The Day Putting The Pieces Together.

Write What You Love And Love What You Write.

Doing What You Love

Edgar Allen Poe Really Started Me When I Was 8. I Fell In Love With Everything Of His.

The World Doesn't Give A Damn About You Unless You Do Something. Those Are The Rules; I Didn't Make Them. If You Are Lazy, If You Don't Get The Work That You Love Done, The World Won't Care If You Die Tomorrow And Go Into The Grave And Are Gone And Forgotten Forever.

But Remember That The Captain Belongs To The Most Dangerous Enemy To Truth And Freedom, The Solid Unmoving Cattle Of The Majority

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!

The Important Thing Is To Be In Love With Something.

Important Things

Screenplays Are Not Writing. They're A Fake Form Of Writing. It's A Lot Of Dialogue And Very Little Atmosphere. Very Little Description. Very Little Character Work. It's Very Dangerous. You'll Never Learn To Write.

When You Write - Explode - Fly Apart - Disintegrate! Then Give Time Enough To Think, Cut, Rework, And Rewrite.

It Won't Work,' Mr. Bentley Continued, Sipping His Tea. 'no Matter How Hard You Try To Be What You Once Were, You Can Only Be What You Are Here And Now. Time Hypnotizes. When You're Nine, You Think You've Always Been Nine Years Old And Will Always Be. When You're Thirty, It Seems You've Always Been Balanced There On That Bright Rim Of Middle Life. And Then When You Turn Seventy, You Are Always And Forever Seventy. You're In The Present, You're Trapped In A Young Now Or An Old Now, But There Is No Other Now To Be Seen.

The Reason I Shift Gears Constantly, Why I'm Doing An Opera, Why I've Done Essays, Why I've Written Poetry For Years That Nobody Wanted, Why I Do Short Stories And Novels And Screenplays... Is So I Will Have New Ways Of Failing. This Means Becoming A Student Again.

What Is The Subconscious To Every Other Man, In Its Creative Aspect Becomes, For Writers, The Muse.

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.

If You Don't Like What You're Doing, Then Don't Do It.

I Have Something To Fight For And Live For; That Makes Me A Better Killer. I've Got What Amounts To A Religion , Now .

Martian Chronicles

In That Film Love Story, There's A Line, "love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry." That's The Dumbest Thing I Ever Heard. Love Means Saying You're Sorry Every Day For Some Little Thing Or Other.

I’m Really Alive! He Thought. I Never Knew It Before, Or If I Did I Don’t Remember!

The Jungle Looked Back At Them With A Vastness, A Breathing Moss-and-leaf Silence, With A Billion Diamond And Emerald Insect Eyes.

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.

He Wore His Happiness Like A Mask And The Girl Had Run Off Across The Lawn With The Mask And There Was No Way Of Going To Knock On Her Door And Ask For It Back.

If Blake Said That, Said Father Brian, He Never Lived In Dublin.

We All Are Rich And Ignore The Buried Fact Of Accumulated Wisdom.

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

And The Lesson Was This; Sit In The Sun, Head Down, Within A Prickly Vine, In A Flickery Light, Or Open Light, And The World Will Come To You. The Sky Will Come In Its Time, Bringing Rain, And The Earth Will Rise Through You, From Beneath, And Make You Rich And Make You Full.

The Ability To "fantasize" Is The Ability To Survive. It's Wonderful To Speak About This Subject Because There Have Been So Many Wrong-headed People Dealing With It.... The So-called Realists Are Trying To Drive Us Insane, And I Refuse To Be Driven Insane.... We Survive By Fantasizing. Take That Away From Us And The Whole Damned Human Race Goes Down The Drain.

I Take This Continent With Me Into The Grave.

Love What You Do And Do What You Love.

Day, After Day, After Glorious Day, I Was Falling In Love With Books.

Falling In Love

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

And There, Row Upon Row, With The Soft Gleam Of Flowers Opened At Morning, With The Light Of This June Sun Glowing Through A Faint Skin Of Dust, Would Stand The Dandelion Wine. Peer Through It At The Wintry Day - The Snow Melted To Grass, The Trees Were Reinhabitated With Bird, Leaf, And Blossoms Like A Continent Of Butterflies Breathing On The Wind. And Peering Through, Color Sky From Iron To Blue. 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

Acting Without Knowing Takes You Right Off The Cliff.

Disbelief Is Catching. It Rubs Off On People.

I Still Love Books. Nothing A Computer Can Do Can Compare To A Book. You Can't Really Put A Book On The Internet. Three Companies Have Offered To Put Books By Me On The Net, And I Said, 'if You Can Make Something That Has A Nice Jacket, Nice Paper With That Nice Smell, Then We'll Talk.' All The Computer Can Give You Is A Manuscript. People Don't Want To Read Manuscripts. They Want To Read Books. Books Smell Good. They Look Good. You Can Press It To Your Bosom. You Can Carry It In Your Pocket.

Books Are Flesh-and-blood Ideas And Cry Out, Silently, When Put To The Torch.

They Are So Confident That They Will Run On Forever. But They Won't Run On. They Don't Know That This Is All One Huge Big Blazing Meteor That Makes A Pretty Fire In Space, But That Some Day It'll Have To Hit.

[he] Was Always Here To Offer Cups Of Good Clear Walden Pond, Or Shout Down The Deep Well Of Shakespeare And Listen, With Satisfaction, For Echoes. Here The Lion And The Hartebeest Lay Together, Here The Jackass Became A Unicorn.

Write 1000 Words A Day. That's Only About Four Pages, But Force Yourself To Do It. Put Your Finger Down Your Throat And Throw Up. That's What Writing's All About.

Somewhere In Him, A Shadow Turned Mournfully Over. You Had To Run With A Night Like This So The Sadness Could Not Hurt

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.

We've Let Too Much Time Go By. We've Been Busy With War Instead Of Being Busy With Peace. And That's What Space Travel Is All About. It's All About Peace And Exploration And Wonder And Beauty.

We Were Put Here As Witnesses To The Miracle Of Life. We See The Stars, And We Want Them. We Are Beholden To Give Back To The Universe. If We Make Landfall On Another Star System, We Become Immortal.

There's No Use Going To School Unless Your Final Destination Is The Library.

The Great Thing About My Life Is That Everything I've Done Is A Result Of What I Was When I Was 12 Or 13.

I Don't Need An Alarm Clock. My Ideas Wake Me.

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.

Don't They Get Afraid, Then?" "they Have A Religion For That.

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.

We Are An Impossibility In An Impossible Universe.

And What, You Ask, Does Writing Teach Us? First And Foremost, It Reminds Us That We Are Alive And That It Is Gift And A Privilege, Not A Right. We Must Earn Life Once It Has Been Awarded Us. Life Asks For Rewards Back Because It Has Favored Us With Animation. So While Our Art Cannot, As We Wish It Could, Save Us From Wars, Privation, Envy, Greed, Old Age, Or Death, It Can Revitalize Us Amidst It All.

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.

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.

In Order To Be Creative, You Don't Have To Be Original.

Programs Like 'jeopardy' And 'who Wants To Be A Millionaire' Are Ridiculous. They're The Stupidest Shows In History. They're Making Us Dumber. They Don't Give Us Information, They Give Us Facts, Factoids. You Don't Learn Who Napoleon Was And How He Was Motivated. You Learn What Year He Was Born, And When He Died. That's Useless.

Facts Are Not Interesting To Me.

Ask No Guarantees, Ask For No Security, There Never Was Such An Animal. And If There Was It Would Be Related To The Great Sloth Which Hangs Upside Down In A Tree All Day Every Day, Sleeping Its Life Away.

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

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

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.

I Am Madness Maddened When It Comes To Books, Writers, And The Great Granary Silos Where Their Wits Are Stored.

Americans Are Far More Remarkable Than We Give Ourselves Credit For. We've Been So Busy Damning Ourselves For Years. We've Done It All, And Yet We Don't Take Credit For It.

The Moon Is A Good, Solid Base To Build A Space Travel Organization In The Community.

If You Can't Read And Write You Can't Think. Your Thoughts Are Dispersed If You Don't Know How To Read And Write. You've Got To Be Able To Look At Your Thoughts On Paper And Discover What A Fool You Were.

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

There Is Too Much Government Today. We've Got To Remember The Government Should Be By The People, Of The People, And For The People.

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

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.

All Silence Is. All Emptiness. And Now: The Dawn.

My Characters Talk To One Another, And When It Reaches A Certain Pitch Of Excitement I Jump Out Of Bed And Run And Trap Them Before They Are Gone.

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.

There's No Reason To Burn Books If You Don't Read Them.

I've Always Known That The Quality Of Love Was The Mind, Even Though The Body Sometimes Refuses This Knowledge. The Body Lives For Itself. It Lives Only To Feed And Wait For The Night. It's Essentially Nocturnal. But What Of The Mind Which Is Born Of The Sun, William, And Must Spend Thousands Of Hours Of A Lifetime Awake And Aware? Can You Balance Off The Body, That Pitiful, Selfish Thing Of Night Against A Whole Lifetime Of Sun And Intellect? I Don't Know.

I Think The Reason My Stories Have Been So Successful Is That I Have A Strong Sense Of Metaphor.

Science Fiction Is The Most Important Literature In The History Of The World, Because It's The History Of Ideas, The History Of Our Civilization Birthing Itself. ...science Fiction Is Central To Everything We've Ever Done, And People Who Make Fun Of Science Fiction Writers Don't Know What They're Talking About.

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

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.

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

Anything You Dream Is Fiction, And Anything You Accomplish Is Science, The Whole History Of Mankind Is Nothing But Science Fiction.

We're All Watching Each Other, So There's No Chance For Censorship. The Main Problem Is The Idiot Tv. If You Watch Local News, Your Head Will Turn To Mush.

I Think The Sun Is A Flower, That Blooms For Just One Hour.

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.

You Don't Have To Worry About The Future, You Don't Worry About The Past - You Just Explode.

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.

What Church Could Compete With The Fireworks Of The Pure Soul?

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!

Marriage Made People Old And Familiar, While Still Young.

It Doesn't Matter What You Do, He Said, 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. 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.

Death Doesn't Exist. It Never Did, It Never Will. But We've Drawn So Many Pictures Of It, So Many Years, Trying To Pin It Down, Comprehend It, We've Got To Thinking Of It As An Entity, Strangely Alive And Greedy. All It Is, However, Is A Stopped Watch, A Loss, An End, A Darkness. Nothing.

Well, After All, This Is The Age Of The Disposable Tissue. Blow Your Nose On A Person, Wad Them, Flush Them Away, Reach For Another, Blow, Wad, Flush. Everyone Using Everyone Else's Coattails. How Are You Supposed To Root For The Home Team When You Don't Even Have A Program Or Know The Names? For That Matter, What Color Jersey's Are They Reading As They Trot Out To The Feild?

We Are The Miracle Of Force And Matter Making Itself Over Into Imagination And Will. Incredible. The Life Force Experimenting With Forms. You For One. Me For Another. The Universe Has Shouted Itself Alive. We Are One Of The Shouts.

There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book. And The World Is Full Of People Running About With Lit Matches.

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.

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.

If You Love People You Criticize Them, And If You Don't Love Them You Don't Criticize Them, You Let Them Go To Hell, Don't You? To Help Any Kind Of Friendship, Your Marriage, Your Children, You Criticize Because You Love.

... Bums On The Outside, Libraries Inside.

Why Love The Woman Who Is Your Wife? Her Nose Breathes In The Air Of A World That I Know; Therefore I Love That Nose. Her Ears Hear Music I Might Sing Half The Night Through; Therefore I Love Her Ears. Her Eyes Delight In Seasons Of The Land; And So I Love Those Eyes. Her Tongue Knows Quince, Peach, Chokeberry, Mint And Lime; I Love To Hear It Speaking. Because Her Flesh Knows Heat, Cold, Affliction, I Know Fire, Snow, And Pain. Shared And Once Again Shared Experience.

Long Before You Knew What Death Was You Were Wishing It On Someone Else.

The Psychiatrist Wants To Know Why I Go Out And Hike Around In The Forests And Watch The Birds And Collect Butterflies. I'll Show You My Collection Some Day.good.they Want To Know What I Do With My Time. I Tell Them That Sometimes I Just Sit And Think. But I Won't Tell Them What. I've Got Them Running. And Sometimes, I Tell Them, I Like To Put My Head Back, Like This, And Let The Rain Fall In My Mouth. It Tastes Just Like Wine. Have You Ever Tried It?

The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time. The World Rushed In A Circle And Turned On Its Axis And Time Was Busy Burning The Years And The People Anyway, Without Any Help From Him. So If He Burnt Things With The Firemen, And The Sun Burnt Time, That Meant Everything Burnt!

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.

You Don't Read In Your Own Field. You Read In That Field When You're Young, So That You Can Learn.

Hello!" He Said Hello And Then Said, "what Are You Up To Now?" "i'm Still Crazy. The Rain Feels Good. I Love To Walk In It. "i Don't Think I'd Like That," He Said. "you Might If You Tried." "i Never Have." She Licked Her Lips. "rain Even Tastes Good." "what Do You Do, Go Around Trying Everything Once?" He Asked. "sometimes Twice.

Like Every Beginner, I Have Thought You Could Beat, Pummel And Thrash An Idea Into Existence. Under Such Treatment, Of Course, Any Decent Idea Folds Up Its Paws, Turns On Its Back, Fixes Its Eyes On Eternity, And Dies.

...i Mean, You Don't Just Love People, You Must Love Them With Exclamation Points.

Exclamation Points

Live As If You'd Drop Dead In Ten Seconds.

Journalism Keeps You Planted In The Earth.

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.

You've Got To Jump Off Cliffs And Build Your Wings On The Way Down.

I Don't Think The Robots Are Taking Over. I Think The Men Who Play With Toys Have Taken Over. And If We Don't Take The Toys Out Of Their Hands, We're Fools.

It Was A Pleasure To Burn.

I Don't Know Anything Anymore

The Trouble With Jim Was He Looked At The World And Could Not Look Away. And When You Never Look Away All Your Life, By The Time You Are Thirteen You Have Done Twenty Years Taking In The Laundry Of The World.

Creativity Is A Continual Surprise.

The Lord Is Not Serious. In Fact, It Is A Little Hard To Know Just What Else He Is Except Loving. And Love Has To Do With Humor, Doesn't It? For You Cannot Love Someone Unless You Put Up With Him, Can You? And You Cannot Put Up With Someone Constantly Unless You Can Laugh At Him. Isn't That True? And Certainly We Are Rediculous Little Animals Wallowing In The Fudge Bowl, And God Must Love Us All The More Because We Appeal To His Humor.

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.

I Don't Like To Go To Theaters, Because I Don't Like The Way Most People Behave In Theaters.

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder, Live As If You'd Drop Dead In Ten Seconds. See The World. It's More Fantastic Than Any Dream Made Or Paid For In Factories.

Tell Us Again, For We Forget, That Work Done Without Love Is Stillborn, Mindless, And Lost In The Very Hour Of Its Deliverance.

Once You Let Yourself Begin To Be Grown-up, You Face A World Full Of Problems You Can't Solve. The Politicians And Specialists - Adults, All - Have A Hard Enough Time Trying To Figure Out Where To Look. It Doesn't Have To Be That Way. The Greatest Solutions In Society Are Reached By Corporate Thinking, Ruled By A Motive To Either Make A Profit Or Go Out Of Business.

I'm Not In Control Of My Muse. My Muse Does All The Work.

I Have Fun With Ideas; I Play With Them.

We're All Fools," Said Clemens, "all The Time. It's Just We're A Different Kind Each Day. We Think, I'm Not A Fool Today. I've Learned My Lesson. I Was A Fool Yesterday But Not This Morning. Then Tomorrow We Find Out That, Yes, We Were A Fool Today Too. I Think The Only Way We Can Grow And Get On In This World Is To Accept The Fact We're Not Perfect And Live Accordingly.

You Can't Learn To Write That Way - By Writing Directly For The Screen. Wait Until You're 30. But In The Meantime Write 200 Short Stories. You've Got To Learn How To Write!

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.

Falling In Love

Self-consciousness Is The Enemy Of All Art, Be It Acting, Writing, Painting, Or Living Itself, Which Is The Greatest Art Of All.

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

His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

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

When You Go Home Tonight, Make A List Of The People Who Are Impediments, Who Don't Believe In You, And Call Them Up And Tell Them, 'get The Hell Out Of My Life.' You Don't Need Them. Writing Is Tough Enough Without Having People Around You Who Contribute To A Writer's Insecurity.

We Need Not To Be Let Alone. We Need To Be Really Bothered Once In A While. How Long Is It Since You Were Really Bothered? About Something Important, About Something Real?

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.

It Takes Writing A Billion Bad Words Before You Get To The Good Ones.

You'd Type Like Hell. I Spent $9.80 And In Nine Days I Had Fahrenheit 451.

I Just Want Someone To Hear What I Have To Say. And Maybe If I Talk Long Enough, It’ll Make Sense.

Sometimes You Have Intuitive Insight About How You Think Things Are Going To Be, And You Write That. Other Times You Fantasize Completely, Which Has Nothing To Do With Predicting The Future.

Beware The Autumn People

I Was Never Young. Whoever I Was Then Is Dead. That's More Of Your Quills. I Don't Want A Hide Full, Thanks. I Have Always Figured That You Die Each Day And And Each Day Is A Is A Box, You See, All Numbered And Neat; But Never Go Back And Lift The Lids, Because You Have Died A Couple Thousand Times In Your Life, And That's A Lot Of Corpses, Each Dead A Different Way, Each With A Worse Expression. Each Of Those Days Is A Different You, Somebody You Don't Know Or Understand Or Want To Understand.

Do Three Things Each Night Before You Go To Bed: Read A Poem, Read A Short Story, Read An Essay.

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?

A Science Fiction Story Is Just An Attempt To Solve A Problem That Exists In The World, Sometimes A Moral Problem, Sometimes A Physical Or Social Or Theological Problem.

Fiction Stories

Recreate The World In Your Own Image And Make It Better For Your Having Been Here.

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

Do You Ever Read Any Of The Books You Burn?" He Laughed. "that's Against The Law!" "oh. Of Course.

Science-fiction Balances You On The Cliff. Fantasy Shoves You Off.

I Believe In Darwin And God Together.

If I Was Ever A Rare Fine Summer Person, That's Long Ago. Most Of Us Are Half-and-half. The August Noon In Us Works To Stave Off The November Chills. We Survive By What Little Fourth Of July Wits We've Stashed Away. But There Are Times When We're All Autumn People.

If We Listened To Our Intellect, We'd Never Have A Love Affair. We'd Never Have A Friendship. We'd Never Go Into Business, Because We'd Be Cynical. Well, That's Nonsense. You've Got To Jump Off Cliffs All The Time And Build Your Wings On The Way Down.

I Used To Take My Short Stories To Girls' Homes And Read Them To Them. Can You Imagine The Reaction Reading A Short Story To A Girl Instead Of Pawing Her?

Through Neglect, Ignorance, Or Inability, The New Intellectual Borgias Cram Hairballs Down Our Throats And Refuse Us The Convulsion That Could Make Us Well. They Have Forgotten, If They Ever Knew, The Ancient Knowledge That Only By Being Truly Sick Can One Regain Health. Even Beasts Know When It Is Good And Proper To Throw Up. Teach Me How To Be Sick Then, In The Right Time And Place, So That I May Again Walk In The Fields And With The Wise And Smiling Dogs Know Enough To Chew Sweet Grass.

We Are Living In A Time When Flowers Are Trying To Live On Flowers, Instead Of On Good Rain And Black Loam.

I Believe In Creative Failing - To Contine To Write Poems That Fail And Fail And Fail Until A Day Comes When You've Got A Thousand Poems Behind You And You're Relaxed And You Finally Write A Good Poem.

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.

My Personal Telephone Book Is A Book Of The Dead Now. I'm So Old. Almost All Of My Friends Have Died, And I Don't Have The Guts To Take Their Names Out Of The Book.

I’m Alive. Thinking About It, Noticing It, Is New. You Do Things And Don’t Watch. Then All Of A Sudden You Look And See What You’re Doing And It’s The First Time, Really.

The Problem In Our Country Isn't With Books Being Banned, But With People No Longer Reading. Look At The Magazines, The Newspapers Around Us - It's All Junk, All Trash, Tidbits Of News. The Average Tv Ad Has 120 Images A Minute. Everything Just Falls Off Your Mind. You Don't Have To Burn Books To Destroy A Culture. Just Get People To Stop Reading Them.

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.

They Stood There, King Of The Hill, Top Of The Heap, Ruler Of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs And Presidents, Trying To Understand What It Meant To Own A World And How Big A World Really Was.

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.

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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