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"oh, Ancient God, Whatever Your Name," Whispered Ahmed. "help This Lost Son Of A Good Father, This Evil Boy Who Meant No Harm But Slept In School, Ran Errands Slowly, Did Not Pray From His Heart, Ignored His Mother, And Did Not Hold His Family In Great Esteem. For All This I Know I Must Suffer. But Here In The Midst Of Silence, At The Desert's Heart, Where Even The Wind Knows Not My Name? Must I Die So Young? Am I To Be Forgotten Without Having Been?"

-Ray Bradbury

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"oh, Ancient God, Whatever

Ray Bradbury

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"oh, Ancient God, Whatever Your Name," Whispered Ahmed. "help This Lost Son Of A Good Father, This Evil Boy Who Meant No Harm But Slept In School, Ran Errands Slowly, Did Not Pray From His Heart, Ignored His Mother, And Did Not Hold His Family In Great Esteem. For All This I Know I Must Suffer. But Here In The Midst Of Silence, At The Desert's Heart, Where Even The Wind Knows Not My Name? Must I Die So Young? Am I To Be Forgotten Without Having Been?"

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The Terrible Tyranny Of The Majority.

Tyranny Of The Majority

Why Then You're As Mad As Me. No, Madder. For I Distrust 'reality' And Its Moron Mother, The Universe, While You Fasten Your Innocence To Fallible Devices Which Pretend At Happy Endings.

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.

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 Need Not To Be Let Alone. We Need To Be Really Bothered Once In A While.

The Average Tv Commercial Of Sixty Seconds Has One Hundred And Twenty Half-second Clips In It, Or One-third Of A Second. We Bombard People With Sensation. That Substitutes For Thinking.

See The World. It's More Fantastic Than Any Dream.

A Single Face Turned Upward Toward All Time One Flesh, One Ecstasy, One Peace.

Facts Are Not Interesting To Me.

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.

We Are Anthill Men Upon An Anthill World.

A Day Without Writing Was A Little Death.

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

How Do You Get So Empty? Who Takes It Out Of You?

Good Writers Touch Life Often.

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

Kill Two Birds With One Stone, Feed The Homeless To The Hungry.

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!

You're Not Like The Others. I've Seen A Few; I Know. When I Talk, You Look At Me. When I Said Something About The Moon, You Looked At The Moon, Last Night. The Others Would Never Do That. The Others Would Walk Off And Leave Me Talking. Or Threaten Me. No One Has Time Any More For Anyone Else. You're One Of The Few Who Put Up With Me. That's Why I Think It's So Strange You're A Fireman, It Just Doesn't Seem Right For You, Somehow.

Last Night I Thought About All The Kerosene I've Used In The Past Ten Years. And I Thought About Books. And For The First Time I Realized That A Man Was Behind Each One Of The Books. A Man Had To Think Them Up. A Man Had To Take A Long Time To Put Them Down On Paper. And I'd Never Even Thought That Thought Before...it Took Some Man A Lifetime Maybe To Put Some Of His Thoughts Down, Looking Around At The World And Life, And Then I Come Along In Two Minutes And Boom! It's All Over.

There Was Always A Minority Afraid Of Something, And A Great Majority Afraid Of The Dark, Afraid Of The Future, Afraid Of The Past, Afraid Of The Present, Afraid Of Themselves And Shadows Of Themselves

My Business Is To Prevent The Future.

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

Any Carefully Planned Thing Destroys The Creativity. You Can't Think Your Way Through A Story; You Have To Live It. So, You Don't Build A Story; You Allow It To Explode.

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

You've Got To Be Able To Look At Your Thoughts On Paper And Discover What A Fool You Were.

I Don't Like The Kind Of Writer Who's Out To Change The World And Beat Up On People For Their Own Good. Stalin Did That And Hitler Did That, And To Hell With Them.

Lone At Night, When I Was Twelve Years Old, I Looked At The Planet Mars And I Said, 'take Me Home!' And The Planet Mars Took Me Home, And I Never Came Back. So I've Written Every Day In The Last 75 Years. I've Never Stopped Writing.

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

Learn To Let Go

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.

Sunsets Are Loved Because They Vanish. Flowers Are Loved Because They Go. The Dogs Of The Field And The Cats Of The Kitchen Are Loved Because Soon They Must Depart. These Are Not The Sole Reasons, But At The Heart Of Morning Welcomes And Afternoon Laughters Is The Promise Of Farewell. In The Gray Muzzle Of An Old Dog We See Goodbye. In The Tired Face Of An Old Friend We Read Long Journeys Beyond Returns.

My Passions Drive Me To The Typewriter Every Day Of My Life, And They Have Driven Me There Since I Was Twelve. So I Never Have To Worry About Schedules. Some New Thing Is Always Exploding In Me, And It Schedules Me, I Don’t Schedule It. It Says: Get To The Typewriter Right Now And Finish This.

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.

Quantity Produces Quality. If You Only Write A Few Things, You're Doomed.

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.

Remember, The Firemen Are Rarely Necessary. The Public Itself Stopped Reading Of Its Own Accord.

Treasure This Day And Treasure Yourself, Truly, Neither Will Ever Happen Again.

Collecting Facts Is Important. Knowledge Is Important. But If You Don't Have An Imagination To Use The Knowledge, Civilization Is Nowhere.

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.

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.

We Have Our Arts So We Won't Die Of Truth.

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")

I Can Write Faster On A Typewriter Than You Can On A Computer. I Do 120 Words A Minute, And You Can't Do That On A Computer.

The Faster You Blurt, The More Swiftly You Write, The More Honest You Are.

You Have To Know How To Accept Rejection And Reject Acceptance.

Sandwich Outdoors Isn’t A Sandwich Anymore. Tastes Different Than Indoors, Notice? Got More Spice. Tastes Like Mint And Pinesap. Does Wonders For The Appetite.

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.

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.

Looking Back Over A Lifetime, You See That Love Was The Answer To Everything.

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?

It Was Only The Other Night Everything Was Fine And The Next Thing I Know Im Drowning. How Many Times Can A Man Go Down And Still Be Alive? I Can't Breathe

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.

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

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.

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

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

Exclamation Points

There Where Hundreds Of Graves. There Where Hundreds Of Women. There Were Hundreds Of Daughters. There Were Hundreds Of Sons. And Hundreds Upon Hundreds Upon Thousands Of Candles. The Whole Graveyard Was One Swarm Of Candleshine As If A Population Of Fireflies Had Heard Of A Grand Conglomeration And Had Flown Here To Settle In And Flame Upon The Stones And Light The Brown Faces And The Dark Eyes And The Black Hair.

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

An Athlete May Run Ten Thousand Miles In Order To Prepare For One Hundred Yards. Quantity Gives Experience.

Who Has More Pockets Than A Magician? A Boy. Whose Pockets Contain *more* Than A Magicians? A Boy's.

I Believe In Having Fun First, And Along The Way, If You Teach People, If You Influence People, Well And Good.

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.

Beer's Intellectual. What A Shame So Many Idiots Drink It.

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

Fahrenheit 451 Book

Without The Library, You Have No Civilization.

Why Is It," He Said, One Time, At The Subway Entrance, "i Feel I've Known You So Many Years?" "because I Like You," She Said, "and I Don't Want Anything From You.

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.

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

Journalism Keeps You Planted In The Earth.

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.

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

Acting Without Knowing Takes You Right Off The Cliff.

Teachers Are To Inspire; Librarians Are To Fulfill.

Every Day Is Christmas Day To A Dog.

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!

The First Thing You Learn In Life Is You're A Fool. The Last Thing You Learn In Life Is You're The Same Fool.

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.

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.

Why The Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, What Tongue Does The Wind Talk? What Nationality Is A Storm? What Country Do Rains Come From? What Color Is Lightning? Where Does Thunder Goe When It Dies?

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.

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.

Space Travel Is Life-enhancing, And Anything That's Life-enhancing Is Worth Doing. It Makes You Want To Live Forever.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

I Spent Three Days A Week For 10 Years Educating Myself In The Public Library, And It's Better Than College. People Should Educate Themselves - You Can Get A Complete Education For No Money. At The End Of 10 Years, I Had Read Every Book In The Library And I'd Written A Thousand Stories.

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.

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.

Why Live? Life Was Its Own Answer. Life Was The Propagation Of More Life And The Living Of As Good A Life As Possible.

Martian Chronicles

Is It True, The World Works Hard And We Play? Is That Why We're Hated So Much?

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!)

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.

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.

What Are You Up To Now?" "i'm Sill Crazy. The Rain Feels Good. I Love To Walk In It.

Now That I Have You Thoroughly Confused, Let Me Pause To Hear Your Own Dismayed Cry.

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

Falling In Love

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!

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 Have Spent My Life Going From Mania To Mania. Somehow It Has All Paid Off.

I Believe In Darwin And God Together.

The Minute You Get A Religion You Stop Thinking. Believe In One Thing Too Much And You Have No Room For New Ideas.

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.

The Best Scientist Is Open To Experience And Begins With Romance - The Idea That Anything Is Possible.

The Huge Round Lunar Clock Was A Gristmill. Shake Down All The Grains Of Time—the Big Grains Of Centuries, And The Small Grains Of Years, And The Tiny Grains Of Hours And Minutes—and The Clock Pulverized Them, Slid Time Silently Out In All Directions In A Fine Pollen, Carried By Cold Winds To Blanket The Town Like Dust, Everywhere. Spores From That Clock Lodged In Your Flesh To Wrinkle It, To Grow Bones To Monstrous Size, To Burst Feet From Shoes Like Turnips. Oh, How That Great Machine…dispensed Time In Blowing Weathers.

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.

Reality And Fiction Are Different In That Fiction Has To Make Sense.

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

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.

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

Shut The Door, They're Coming Through The Window, Shut The Window, They're Coming Through The Door," Are The Words To An Old Song. They Fit My Lifestyle With Newly Arriving Butcher/censors Every Month. Only Six Weeks Ago, I Discovered That, Over The Years, Some Cubby-hole Editors At Ballantine Books, Fearful Of Contaminating The Young, Had, Bit By Bit, Censored Some 75 Separate Sections From The Novel. Students, Reading The Novel Which, After All, Deals With Censorship And Book-burning In The Future, Write To Tell Me Of This Exquisite Irony.

Savory...that's A Swell Word. And Basil And Betel. Capsicum. Curry. All Great. But Relish, Now, Relish With A Capital R. No Argument, That' The Best.

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

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

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.

If Someone Tells You To Do Something For Money, Tell Them To Go To Hell.

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

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.

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

I Don't Believe In Colleges And Universities. I Believe In Libraries Because Most Students Don't Have Any Money. When I Graduated From High School, It Was During The Depression And We Had No Money. I Couldn't Go To College, So I Went To The Library Three Days A Week For 10 Years.

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

No Person Ever Died That Had A Family.

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

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

Life Shoould Be Touched, Not Strangled. You've Got To Relax, Let It Happen At Times, And At Other Move Forward With It.

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.

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

A Book Is A Loaded Gun.

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.

When Rivers Flooded, When Fire Fell From The Sky, What A Fine Place The Library Was, The Many Rooms, The Books. With Luck, No One Found You. How Could They!--when You Were Off To Tanganyika In '98, Cairo In 1812, Florence In 1492!?

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

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

Putting Out The Stars And Extinguishing The Sun.

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

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.

To Everything There Is A Season. Yes. A Time To Break Down, And A Time To Build Up. Yes. A Time To Keep Silence And A Time To Speak. Yes.

Reading Is At The Center Of Our Lives. The Library Is Our Brain. Without The Library, You Have No Civilization.

People Want To Be Happy, Isn't That Right? Haven't You Heard It All Your Life? I Want To Be Happy, People Say. Well, Aren't They? Don't We Keep Them Moving, Don't We Give Them Fun? That's All We Live For, Isn't It? For Pleasure, For Titillation? And You Must Admit Our Culture Provides Plenty Of These.

You Can't Try To Do Things; You Simply Must Do Them.

Thinking Of You

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.

It Could Reach Up And Grab The Moon.

Nobody Listens Anymore. I Can't Talk To The Walls Because They're Yelling At Me, I Can't Talk To My Wife; She Listens To The Walls. I Just Want Someone To Hear What I Have To Say. And Maybe If I Talk Long Enough It'll Make Sense. And I Want You To Teach Me To Understand What I Read.

Life Is About Trying Things To See If They Work.

We Have Too Many Cellphones. We've Got Too Many Internets. We Have Got To Get Rid Of Those Machines. We Have Too Many Machines Now.

First Of All, It Was October, A Rare Month For Boys.

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

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

You Must Live Feverishly In A Library. Colleges Are Not Going To Do Any Good Unless You Are Raised And Live In A Library Everyday Of Your Life.

I Was Partially Raised By An Aunt Who Was A Dress Designer, So I Was Around Her Studio All Of My Early Life. I Know Materials. I Can Look Through Harper's Bazaar And Decide What Works And What Doesn't, Or Any Other Magazine, Seventeen If You Wish.

When I Graduated From High School, It Was During The Depression And We Had No Money.

Heaven Is A House With Porch Lights.

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

The Internet Is A Big Distraction. It's Distracting, It's Meaningless; It's Not Real. It's In The Air Somewhere.

You're Afraid Of Making Mistakes. Don't Be. Mistakes Can Be Profited By. Man, When I Was Young I Shoved My Ignorance In People's Faces. They Beat Me With Sticks. By The Time I Was Forty My Blunt Instrument Had Been Honed To A Fine Cutting Point For Me. If You Hide Your Ignorance, No One Will Hit You And You'll Never Learn.

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.

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.

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

The Important Thing Of Any Time You Live In Is To Be In Love Yourself. You Float Above Your Time Then. It's What You Want That Counts, Not What Your Time Wants.

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.

Venice Was And Is Full Of Lost Places Where People Put Up For Sale The Last Worn Bits Of Their Souls, Hoping No One Will Buy.

We Are The Witnesses To The Miracle. We Are Put Here By Creation, By God....we're Here To Be The Audience To The Magnificent. It Is Our Job To Celebrate.

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

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.

Tyranny Of The Majority

The History Of Science Fiction Started In The Caves 20,000 Years Ago. The Ideas On The Walls Of The Cave Were Problems To Be Solved. It's Problem Solving. Primitive Scientific Knowledge, Primitive Dreams, Primitive Blueprinting: To Solve Problems.

Action Is Hope. There Is No Hope Without Action.

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.

There's A Lot Of Crap Out There. Most Of The Science Fiction Films Alone Are Abominations, You Know. They're Mindless. So You Can't Learn From Those Kinds Of Films.

When I Finished [writing It], I Was Crying. I Knew At Long Last, After Ten Years Of Trying, I Had Written Something Good.

He Knew What The Wind Was Doing To Them, Where It Was Taking Them, To All The Secret Places That Were Never So Secret Again In Life.

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.

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?

He Stood Breathing, And The More He Breathed The Land In, The More He Was Filled Up With All The Details Of The Land. He Was Not Empty. There Was More Than Enough Here To Fill Him. There Would Always Be More Than Enough.

A Life's Work Should Be Based On Love.

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.

Good To Evil Seems Evil

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?

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.

First Grade Is Very Cheap. It's The Later Grades Where You Have To Spend A Lot Of Money If You Don't Do It Right.

Melt All The Guns, I Thought, Break The Knives, Burn The Guillotines-and The Malicious Will Still Write Letters That Kill.

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.

And The Odd Think In Dad's Voice Was The Sound Truth Makes Being Said.

I’ve Often Been Accused Of Being Too Emotional And Sentimental, But I Believe In Honest Sentiment, And The Need To Purge Ourselves At Certain Times, Which Is Ancient. Men Would Live At Least Five Or Six More Years And Not Have Ulcers If They Could Cry Better.

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

Where Would You Like To Go, What Would You Really Like To Do With Your Life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write A Book. Smoke Too Many Cigarettes. Fall Off A Cliff But Get Caught In A Tree Halfway Down. Get Shot At A Few Times In A Dark Alley On A Morrocan Midnight. Love A Beautiful Woman.

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

Out In The World Not Much Happened. But Here In The Special Night, A Land Bricked With Paper And Leather Anything Might Happen, Always Did.

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.

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

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

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.

Writing Is Supposed To Be Difficult, Agonizing, A Dreadful Exercise, A Terrible Occupation.

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 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!

Time Is So Strange And Life Is Twice As Strange. You Must Promise Me Not To Live To Be Too Old, William. It If Is At All Convenient, Die Before You're Fifty. It My Take A Bit Of Doing. But I Advise This Is Simply Because There Is No Telling When Another Helen Loomis Might Be Born. It Would Be Dreadful, Wouldn't It, If You Lived On To Be Very Very Old And Some Afternoon In 1999 Walked Down Main Street And Saw Me Standing There, Aged Twenty-one, And The Whole Thing Out Of Balance Again?

The Universe Has Shouted Itself Alive. We Are One Of The Shouts.

Martian Chronicles

Forgive, I Hope You Won't Be Upset, But When I Was A Boy I Used To Look Up And See You Behind Your Desk, So Near But Far Away, And, How Can I Say This, I Used To Think That You Were Mrs. God, And That The Library Was A Whole World, And That No Matter What Part Of The World Or What People Or Thing I Wanted To See And Read, You'd Find And Give It To Me.

The Important Thing Is To Be In Love With Something.

Important Things

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