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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.

-Ray Bradbury

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If We Listened To

Ray Bradbury

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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.

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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.

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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?

I Think We're Doing A Dreadful Job Of Educating.

For Everyone Nowadays Knows, Absolutely Is Certain, That Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen To Me. Others Die, I Go On. There Are No Consequences And No Responsibilities. Except That There Are. But Let's Not Talk About Them, Eh? By The Time The Consequences Catch Up To You, It's Too Late, Isn't It, Montag?

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.

...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.

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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.

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

Don't Write For Money. Write Because You Love To Do Something. If You Write For Money, You Won't Write Anything Worth Reading.

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Once The Automobile Appeared You Could Have Predicted That It Would Destroy As Many People As It Did.

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

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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?

Action Is Hope. There Is No Hope Without Action.

If You Don't Want A Man Unhappy Politically, Don't Give Him Two Sides To A Question To Worry Him; Give Him One. Better Yet, Give Him None.

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

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?

A Life's Work Should Be Based On Love.

The One Sure Way I Can Dishonor Myself Is By Worrying About My Reputation.

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.

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

For It Is A Mad World And It Will Get Madder If We Allow The Minorities, Be They Dwarf Or Giant, Orangutan Or Dolphin, Nuclear-head Or Water-conversationalist, Pro-computerologist Or Neo-luddite, Simpleton Or Sage, To Interfere With Aesthetics. The Real World Is The Playing Ground For Each And Every Group, To Make Or Unmake Laws. But The Tip Of The Nose Of My Book Or Stories Or Poems Is Where Their Rights End And My Territorial Imperatives Begin, Run And Rule.

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.

To Sum It All Up, If You Want To Write, If You Want To Create, You Must Be The Most Sublime Fool That God Ever Turned Out And Sent Rambling. You Must Write Every Single Day Of Your Life. You Must Write Dreadful Dumb Books And Glorious Books, And Let Them Wrestle In Beautiful Fights Inside Your Head, Vulgar One Moment, Brilliant The Next.

So It Was The Hand That Started It All . . . His Hands Had Been Infected, And Soon It Would Be His Arms . . . His Hands Were Ravenous.

All Of The Good, Weird Stories I’ve Written Are Based On Things I’ve Dredged Out Of My Subconscious. That’s The Real Stuff. Everything Else Is Fake.

From Now On I Hope Always To Educate Myself As Best I Can. But Lacking This, In Future I Will Relaxedly Turn Back To My Secret Mind To See What It Has Observed When I Thought I Was Sitting This One Out. We Never Sit Anything Out.

I Don't Think About What I Do. I Do It. That's Buddhism. I Jump Off The Cliff And Build My Wings On The Way Down.

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?

Learning To Let Go Should Be Learned Before Learning To Get. Life Should Be Touched, Not Strangled.

Learn To Let Go

Love. Fall In Love And Stay In Love. Write Only What You Love, And Love What You Write. The Key Word Is Love. You Have To Get Up In The Morning And Write Something You Love, Something To Live For.

You're Either In Love With What You Do, Or You're Not In Love.

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

Exclamation Points

Most Of My Stories Are Ideas In Action. In Other Words, I Get A Concept, And I Let It Run Away. I Find A Character To Act Out The Idea. And Then The Story Takes Care Of Itself.

Write A Thousand Words A Day And In Three Years You'll Be A Writer!

I Am A Child Of The Poisonous Wind That Copulated With The East River On An Oil-slick, Garbage Infested Midnight. I Turn About On My Own Parentage. I Inoculate Against Those Very Biles That Brought Me To Light. I Am A Serum Born Of Venoms. I Am The Antibody Of All Time. I Am The Cure. You Do Of The City, Do You Not? Manhattan Is Your Punisher, Let Me Be You Shield.

With A Book Tucked In One Hand, And A Computer Shoved Under My Elbow, I Will March, Not Sidle, Shudder Or Quake, Into The Twenty-first Century.

To Feed Your Muse, Then, You Should Always Have Been Hungry About Life Since You Were A Child. If Not, It Is A Little Late To Start.

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.

Have You Ever Watched The Jet Cars Race On The Boulevard?...i Sometimes Think Drivers Don’t Know What Grass Is, Or Flowers, Because They Never See Them Slowly...if You Showed A Driver A Green Blur, Oh Yes! He'd Say, That’s Grass! A Pink Blur! That’s A Rose Garden! White Blurs Are Houses. Brown Blurs Are Cows.

It's Rare You Get An Idea From A Dream. I Can't Really Recall A Story That Ever Worked Out That Way. I Think In 35 Years Of Writing, That I've Ever Had A Dream That Held Up. They're Much Too Dislocated

Remember: Plot Is No More Than Footprints Left In The Snow After Your Characters Have Run By On Their Way To Incredible Destinations. Plot Is Observed After The Fact Rather Than Before. It Cannot Precede Action. It Is The Chart That Remains When An Action Is Through. That Is All Plot Ever Should Be. It Is Human Desire Let Run, Running, And Reaching A Goal. It Cannot Be Mechanical. It Can Only Be Dynamic.

If You Had Your Way You’d Pass A Law To Abolish All The Little Jobs, The Little Things. But Then You’d Leave Yourselves Nothing To Do Between The Big Jobs And You’d Have A Devil Of A Time Thinking Up Things To Do So You Wouldn’t Go Crazy. Instead Of That, Why Not Let Nature Show You A Few Things? Cutting Grass And Pulling Weeds Can Be A Way Of Life, Son.

I Love Writing, It's The Center Of My Life. If You Don't Love What You Do, You'd Better Find Something Else To Love. Otherwise, You Don't Have A Reason For Living.

Cram Them Full Of Non-combustible Data, Chock Them So Damned 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. And They’ll Be Happy, Because Facts Of That Sort Don’t Change. Don’t Give Them Any Slippery Stuff Like Philosophy Or Sociology To Tie Things Up With. That Way Lies Melancholy.

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

Your Mind's Always Juggling, Isn't It?-mirrors, Torches, Plates.

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.

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

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.

Video Games Are A Waste Of Time For Men With Nothing Else To Do.

Mysteries Abound Where Most We Seek For Answers.

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

Do Your Own Bit Of Saving, And If You Drown, At Least Die Knowing You Were Headed For Shore.

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.

The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

There Is Only One Type Of Story In The World-your Story.

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.

The Trouble With A Lot Of People Who Try To Write Is They Intellectualize About It. That Comes After. The Intellect Is Given To Us By God To Test Things Once They’re Done, Not To Worry About Things Ahead Of Time.

First, Find Out What Your Hero Wants, Then Just Follow Him.

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.

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.

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.

It's Lack That Gives Us Inspiration. It's Not Fullness.

You'll Be Found, Your Nickels, Dimes And Indian-heads Fused By Electroplating. Abe Lincolns Melted Into Miss Columbias, Eagles Plucked Raw On The Backs Of Quarters, All Run To Quicksilver In Your Jeans. More! Any Boy Hit By Lightning, Lift His Lid And There On His Eyeball, Pretty As The Lord's Prayer On A Pin, Find The Last Scene The Boy Ever Saw! A Box-brownie Photo, By God, Of That Fire Climbing Down The Sky To Blow You Like A Penny Whistle, Suck Your Soul Back Up Along The Bright Stair!

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

He Says I'm A Regular Onion! I Keep Him Busy Peeling Away The Layers.

I Don't Believe In Colleges And Universities.

Fame And Money Are Gifts Given To Us Only After We Have Gifted The World With Our Best, Our Lonely, Our Individual Truths.

No," Said A Voice, "the Only Thing Wrong On A Night Like That Is That There Is A World And You Must Come Back To It.

But No Man's A Hero To Himself.

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.

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

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

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.

Creativity Is A Continual Surprise.

It Was In Their Friendship They Just Wanted To Run Forever, Shadow And Shadow.

Memory Is An Illusion, Nothing More. It Is A Fire That Needs Constant Tending.

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.

We Should Go To The Moon And Prepare A Base To Fire A Rocket Off To Mars And Then Go To Mars And Colonize Mars. Then When We Do That, We Will Live Forever.

I Don’t Write Things To Benefit The World. If It Happens That They Do, Swell. I Didn’t Set Out To Do That. I Set Out To Have A Hell Of A Lot Of Fun.

(in Response To The Question: What Do You Think Of E-books And Amazon’s Kindle?) Those Aren’t Books. You Can’t Hold A Computer In Your Hand Like You Can A Book. A Computer Does Not Smell. There Are Two Perfumes To A Book. If A Book Is New, It Smells Great. If A Book Is Old, It Smells Even Better. It Smells Like Ancient Egypt. A Book Has Got To Smell. You Have To Hold It In Your Hands And Pray To It. You Put It In Your Pocket And You Walk With It. And It Stays With You Forever. But The Computer Doesn’t Do That For You. I’m Sorry.

I Want Your Loves To Be Multiple. I Don't Want You To Be A Snob About Anything. Anything You Love, You Do It.

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.

Poetry Expands The Senses And Keeps Them In Prime Condition. It Keeps You Aware Of Your Nose, Your Eye, Your Ear, Your Tongue, Your Hand.

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

If You're Reluctant To Weep, You Won't Live A Full And Complete Life.

Our Civilization Is Flinging Itself To Pieces. Stand Back From The Centrifuge.

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.

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

Each Person Was Himself One Alone. One Oneness, A Unit In A Society, But Always Afraid, Always Alone. If I Should Scream, If I Should Call For Help, Would Anyone Hear Would It Even Matter?

Don't Talk About It; Write.

There Are Too Many Of Us, He Thought. There Are Billions Of Us And That's Too Many. Nobody Knows Anyone. Strangers Come And Violate You. Strangers Come And Cut Your Heart Out. Strangers Come And Take Your Blood. Good God, Who Were Those Men? I Never Saw Them Before In My Life!

Far Away, In The Meadow, Shadows Flickered In The Mirror's Maze, As If Parts Of Someone's Life, Yet Unborn, Were Trapped There, Waiting To Be Lived.

The Human Race Likes To Give Itself Airs. One Good Volcano Can Produce More Greenhouse Gases In A Year Than The Human Race Has In Its Entire History.

People Who Take Books On Sex To Bed Become Frigid. You Get Self-conscious. You Can't Think A Story. You Can't Think, "i Shall Do A Story To Improve Mankind." Well, It's Nonsense. All The Great Stories, All The Really Worthwhile Plays, Are Emotional Experiences. If You Have To Ask Yourself Whether Or Not You Love A Girl Or You Love A Boy, Forget It. You Don't. A Story Is The Same Way. You Either Feel A Story And Need To Write It, Or You Better Not Write It.

The Years Go By. The Time, It Does Fly. Every Single Second Is A Moment In Time That Passes. And It Seems Like Nothing - But When You're Looking Back ... Well, It Amounts To Everything.

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.

Jump, And You Will Find Out How To Unfold Your Wings As You Fall.

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

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

When Your Dawn Theater Sounds To Clear Your Sinuses: Don't Delay. Jump. Those Voices May Be Gone Before You Hit The Shower To Align Your Wits. Speed Is Everything. The 90-mph Dash To Your Machine Is A Sure Cure For Life Rampant And Death Most Real. Make Haste To Live. Oh, God, Yes. Live. And Write. With Great Haste.

When You're Older You Want To Learn From Other People.

People Ask Me To Predict The Future, When All I Want To Do Is Prevent It. Better Yet, Build It. Predicting The Future Is Much Too Easy, Anyway. You Look At The People Around You, The Street You Stand On, The Visible Air You Breathe, And Predict More Of The Same. To Hell With More. I Want Better.

It Was A Great Place To Write A Novel About Book Burning, In The Library Basement.

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.

The Gods Had Gone Away, And The Ritual Of The Religion Continued Senselessly, Uselessly.

There Are Certain Kinds Of People Who Write Science Fiction. I Think A Lot Of Us Married Late. A Lot Of Us Are Mama's Boys. I Lived At Home Until I Was 27. But Most Of The Writers I Know In Any Field, Especially Science Fiction, Grew Up Late. They're So Interested In Doing What They Do And In Their Science, They Don't Think About Other Things.

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.

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

Life Is About Trying Things To See If They Work.

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.

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.

I Was Not Predicting The Future, I Was Trying To Prevent It.

Predicting The Future

Work. Don't Think. Relax.

The Television Is 'real'. It Is Immediate, It Has Dimension. It Tells You What To Think And Blasts It In. It Must Be Right. It Seems So Right. It Rushes You On So Quickly To Its Own Conclusions Your Mind Hasn't Time To Protest, 'what Nonsense!'.

I Am Not A Science Fiction Writer. I Am A Fantasy Writer. But The Label Got Put On Me And Stuck.

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.

Writing Is Not A Serious Business. It’s A Joy And A Celebration. You Should Be Having Fun With It.

But Most Of All, 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 Are Going. Sometimes I Even Go To Fun Parks And Ride In The Jet Cars When They Race On The Edge Of Town At Midnight And The Police Don't Care As Long As They're Insured. As Long As Everyone Has Ten Thousand Insurance Everyone's Happy. Sometimes I Sneak Around And Listen In Subways. Or I Listen At Soda Fountains, And Do You Know What? People Don't Talk About Anything.

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.

Putting Out The Stars And Extinguishing The Sun.

Sometimes I Think I Understand Everything. Then I Regain Consciousness

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.

Science Is No More Than An Investigation Of A Miracle We Can Never Explain, And Art Is An Interpretation Of That Miracle.

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.

I Define Science Fiction As The Art Of The Possible. Fantasy Is The Art Of The Impossible. Science Fiction, Again, Is The History Of Ideas, And They're Always Ideas That Work Themselves Out And Become Real And Happen In The World. And Fantasy Comes Along And Says, 'we're Going To Break All The Laws Of Physics.' ... Most People Don't Realize It, But The Series Of Films Which Have Made More Money Than Any Other Series Of Films In The History Of The Universe Is The James Bond Series. They're All Science Fiction, Too - Romantic, Adventurous, Frivolous, Fantastic Science Fiction!

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.

I'll Be Darned!" Said Douglas. "i Never Thought Of That. That's Brilliant! It's True. Old People Never Were Children!" "and It's Kind Of Sad," Said Tom, Sitting Still."there's Nothing We Can Do To Help Them.

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

If You Dream The Proper Dreams, And Share The Myths With People, They Will Want To Grow Up To Be Like You.

I Don't Like Being Up High. It Took Me Three Days To Get To The Top Of The Eiffel Tower.

All Of Us, No Matter How We Look Born Into This World, Feel Something Like The Hunchback. It Doesn't Matter If You Have A Beautiful Face Or Not.

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.

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.

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

Plot Is No More Than Footprints Left In The Snow After Your Characters Have Run By On Their Way To Incredible Destinations.

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.

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