Background Image

...

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.

-Ray Bradbury

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Orwell Was Dealing With

Ray Bradbury

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Ray Bradbury

My Stories Are Warnings; They're Not Predictions. If They Were Predictions, I Wouldn't Do Them. Because Then I'd Be Part Of The Doom-ridden Psychology. But Every Time I Name A Problem, I Try To Give A Solution.

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.

Disbelief Is Catching. It Rubs Off On People.

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.

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.

So There You Have It, A Lifetime Of First Smelling The Books, They All Smell Wonderful, Reading The Books, Loving The Books, And Remembering The Books.

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

Those Who Live In The Best Cliffs Think They Are Better Than Us. That Is Always Man's Attitude When He Has Power.

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

Why Go To A Machine When You Could Go To A Human Being?

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.

My Job Is To Help You Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

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.

Do You Ever Wonder If--well, If There Are People Living On The Third Planet?' 'the Third Planet Is Incapable Of Supporting Life,' Stated The Husband Patiently. 'our Scientists Have Said There's Far Too Much Oxygen In Their Atmosphere.

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.

Time Is So Strange And Life Is Twice As Strange.

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

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.

Mother: Why, Just Lying There, Jim, You Run So Fast. I Never Saw Anyone Move So Much, Just Sleeping. Promise Me, Jim. Wherever You Go And Come Back, Bring Lots Of Kids. Let Them Run Wild. Let Me Spoil Them, Some Day. Jim: I'm Never Going To Own Anything That Can Hurt Me.

Writing Is Like Sex. You Have To Save Your Love For The Love Object. If You Go Around Spouting About Your Idea, There'll Be No "charge" Left. You Can't Father Children That Way.

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.

In Order For A Thing To Be Horrible It Has To Suffer A Change You Can Recognize.

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.

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.

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

Kids Love Me Because I Write Stories That Tell Them About Their Capacity For Evil. I'm One Of The Few Writers Who Lets You Cleanse Yourself That Way.

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

Everything Is Generated Through Your Own Will Power. You Don't Have To Do Anything You Don't Want To Do. This Is A Democracy. You Go Where You Want To Go And Do What You Want To Do.

You Ask Why To A Lot Of Things And You Wind Up Very Unhappy Indeed, If You Keep At It. The Poor Girl's Better Off Dead

Better Off Dead

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

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?

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.

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 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?

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

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

..holding A Book But Reading The Empty Spaces.

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

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.

Get The Big Truth First. If You Get The Big Truth, The Small Truths Will Accumulate Around It.

All Education Is Self-discovery.

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

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

(...) And Metaphors Like Cats Behind Your Smile, Each One Wound Up To Purr, Each One A Pride, Each One A Fine Gold Beast You've Hid Inside (...)

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

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

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

Not To Write, For Many Of Us, Is To Die. We Must Take Ares Each And Every Day, Perhaps Knowing That The Battle Cannot Be Entirely Won, But Fight We Must, If Only A Gentle Bout. The Smallest Effort To Win Means, At The End Of Each Day, A Sort Of Victory.

If You're Living In Your Time, You Cannot Help But To Write About The Things That Are Important.

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.

You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

Inspiration To Write

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

... Bums On The Outside, Libraries Inside.

The River Was Mild And Leisurely, Going Away From The People Who Ate Shadows For Breakfast And Steam For Lunch And Vapors For Supper.

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

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

If Someone Sends You A Love Letter You've Got To Answer Back.

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.

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.

The Whole Concept Of Higher Education Is Negated Unless The Sole Criterion Used To Determine If Students Qualify Is The Grades They Score On Standardized Tests. Education Is Purely An Issue Of Learning - We Can No Longer Afford To Have It Polluted By Damn Politics. Leave Pollution Up To The Politicians

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.

He Raged For Hours. And The Skeleton, Ever The Frail And Solelmn Philosopher, Hung Quietly Inside, Saying Not A Word, Suspended Like A Delicate Insect Within A Chrysalis, Waiting And Waiting.

We Are Cups, Constantly And Quietly Being Filled. The Trick Is Knowing How To Tip Ourselves Over And Let The Beautiful Stuff Out.

I'm Interested In Having Fun With Ideas, Throwing Them Up In The Air Like Confetti And Then Running Under Them.

And I Saw Then And There You Take A Man Half-bad And A Women Half-bad And Put Their Two Good Halves Together And You Got One Human All Good To Share Between.

I Have My Favorite Cat, Who Is My Paperweight, On My Desk While I Am Writing.

Men Are Nuts. Young Men Are Crazy. We All Love Toys. I'm Toy Oriented. I Write About Toys. I've Got A Lot Of Toys. Hundreds Of Things. But Computers Are Toys, And Men Like To Mess Around With Smart Dumb Things. They Feel Creative.

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.

So Few Want To Be Rebels Anymore. And Out Of Those Few, Most, Like Myself, Scare Easily.

I Did What Most Writers Do At Their Beginnings: Emulated My Elders, Imitated My Peers, Thus Turning Away From Any Possibility Of Discovering Truths Beneath My Skin And Behind My Eye.

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.

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

They Crashed The Front Door And Grabbed At A Woman, Though She Was Not Running, She Was Not Trying To Escape. She Was Only Standing, Weaving From Side To Side, Her Eyes Fixed Upon A Nothingness In The Wall As If They Had Struck Her A Terrible Blow Upon The Head. Her Tongue Was Moving In Her Mouth, And Her Eyes Seemed To Be Trying To Remember Something, And Then They Remembered And Her Tongue Moved Again: "play The Man, Master Ridley; We Shall This Day Light Such A Candle, By God's Grace, In England, As I Trust Shall Never Be Put Out.

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.

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'm Being Ironic. Don't Interrupt A Man In The Midst Of Being Ironic, It's Not Polite. There!

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.

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

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

I Want To Feel All There Is To Feel, He Thought. Let Me Feel Tired, Now, Let Me Feel Tired. I Mustn't Forget, I'm Alive, I Know I'm Alive, I Mustn't Forget It Tonight Or Tomorrow Or The Day After That.

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?

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.

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

Heaven Is A House With Porch Lights.

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.

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.

How Working For The Wrong Motives Poisons Our Creativity And Warps Our Ideas Of Success And Failure.

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

We Earth Men Have A Talent For Ruining Big, Beautiful Things.

His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

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

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

In Your Reading, Find Books To Improve Your Color Sense, Your Sense Of Shape And Size In The World.

I Take This Continent With Me Into The Grave.

Love What You Do And Do What You Love.

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'm Not Anyone, I'm Just Myself; Whatever I Am, I Am Something, And Now I'm Something You Can't Help.

Martian Chronicles

What Do You Do, Go Around Trying Everything Once?' He Asked. 'sometimes Twice.

Trying Everything

A Life's Work Should Be Based On Love.

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

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

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.

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.

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 Love You And I Forgive You. I Am Like You And You Are Like Me. I Love All People. I Love The World. I Love Creating. Everything In Our Life Should Be Based On Love.

The Books Leapt And Danced Like Roasted Birds, Their Wings Ablaze With Red And Yellow Feathers.

Don't Think. Thinking Is The Enemy Of Creativity. It's Self-conscious, And Anything Self-conscious Is Lousy. You Can't Try To Do Things. You Simply Must Do Things.

Thinking Of You

This Is The Emotional Thing, You See - You Must Galvanize People, So They Want To Be Completely Alive And Live Forever, Or The Next Thing To It. And Out Of That Comes Art, Then, And Survival Through Emotion.

A Story Should Be Like A River, Flowing And Never Stopping, Your Readers Passengers On A Boat, Whirling Downstream Through Constantly Refreshing And Changing Scemery.

All Isn't Well With The World.

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.

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

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.

God, Here And There, Makes Madness A Calling.

Life Is About Trying Things To See If They Work.

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.

Time Was A Film Run Backward. Suns Fled And Ten Million Moons Fled After Them.

I Am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons Is Marcus. I Want You To Meet Jonathan Swift, The Author Of That Evil Political Book, Gulliver's Travels! And This Other Fellow Is Charles Darwin, And-this One Is Schopenhauer, And This One Is Einstein, And This One Here At My Elbow Is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, A Very Kind Philosopher Indeed. Here We All Are, Montag. Aristophanes And Mahatma Gandhi And Gautama Buddha And Confucius And Thomas Love Peacock And Thomas Jefferson And Mr. Lincoln, If You Please. We Are Also Matthew, Mark, Luke, And John.

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

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.

Remember, With Writing, What You’re Looking For Is Just One Person To Come Up And Tell You, 'i Love You For What You Do.'

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 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.

Teachers Are To Inspire; Librarians Are To Fulfill.

Without Libraries What Have We? We Have No Past And No Future.

I Don't Believe In Being Serious About Anything. I Think Life Is Too Serious To Be Taken Seriously.

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

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.

You Can Make Yourself Happy Or Miserable - It's The Same Amount Of Effort.

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.

I Have Four Daughters And Eight Grandchildren. My Soul Lives On In Them. That's Immortality. That's The Only Immortality I Care About.

I Often Wonder If God Recognizes His Own Son The Way We've Dressed Him Up, Or Is It Dressed Him Down?

At The Top Of Your Lungs, Shout And Listen To The Echoes. You Must Live Life At The Top Of Your Voice!

Facts Are Not Interesting To Me.

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

Write. Don't Think. Relax.

The Wind Outside Nested In Each Tree, Prowled The Sidewalks In Invisible Treads Like Unseen Cats. Tom Skelton Shivered. Anyone Could See That The Wind Was A Special Wind This Night, And The Darkness Took On A Special Feel Because It Was All Hallows' Eve. Everything Seemed Cut From Soft Black Velvet Or Gold Or Orange Velvet. Smoke Panted Up Out Of A Thousand Chimneys Like The Plumes Of Funeral Parades. From Kitchen Windows Drifted Two Pumpkin Smells: Gourds Being Cut, Pies Being Baked.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

We Must All Be Alike. Not Everyone Born Free And Equal, As The Constitution Says, But Everyone Made Equal. Each Man The Image Of Every Other; Then All Are Happy, For There Are No Mountains To Make Them Cower, To Judge Themselves Against.

Good To Evil Seems Evil

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.

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

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

We Should Have Stayed On The Moon. We Should Have Made Moon The Base, Instead Of Building Space Stations, Which Are Fragile And Which Fly Apart.

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!

"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."

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.

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.

Mysteries Abound Where Most We Seek For Answers.

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

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.

Love Is Easy, And I Love Writing.

We Earth Men Have A Talent For Ruining Big, Beautiful Things. The Only Reason We Didn't Set Up Hot-dog Stands In The Midst Of The Egyptian Temple Of Karnak Is Because It Was Out Of The Way And Served No Large Commercial Purpose.

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.

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.

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

There Are A Lot Of Wonderful Women Writers Who Would Be Good Influences On Writers. You've Got To Spread Yourself Out And Educate Yourself With All Kinds Of Stories.

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.

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.

Beware The Autumn People

I Shall Remain On Mars And Read A Book.

Putting Out The Stars And Extinguishing The Sun.

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 Was One Of Them: The Strange Ones. The Funny People. The Odd Tribes Of Autograph Collectors And Photographers. The Ones Who Waited Through Long Days And Nights, Who Used Other People's Dreams For Their Lives.

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

Bees Do Have A Smell, You Know, And If They Don't They Should, For Their Feet Are Dusted With Spices From A Million Flowers.

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

You Don't Organize Metaphors . . . You Explode Them.

We're A Free Society; We've Got Television. We Have Radio. We Have Newspapers. We Have The Videocassette, Which Is Coming Into Play. These Are New Freedoms.

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.

The Purpose Of Fiction Is Not To Nail You To The Ground As Facts Do, But To Take You To The Edge Of The Cliff And Kick You Off So You Build Your Wings On The Way Down.

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.

A Good Night Sleep, Or A Ten Minute Bawl, Or A Pint Of Chocolate Ice Cream, Or All Three Together, Is Good Medicine.

Chocolate Ice Cream

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Grandfather's Been Dead All These Years, But If You Lifted My Skull, By God, In The Convolutions Of My Brain You'd Find The Big Ridges Of His Thumbprint. He Touched Me. As I Said Earlier, He Was A Sculptor. 'i Hate A Roman Named Status Quo!' He Said To Me. 'stuff Your Eyes With Wonder,' He Said, '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.

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.

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.

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

He Lay Far Across The Room From Her, On A Winter Island Separated By An Empty Sea. She Talked To Him For What Seemed A Long While And She Talked About This And She Talked About That And It Was Only Words, Like The Words He Had Heard Once In A Nursery At A Friend's House, A Two-year-old Child Building Word Patters, Like Jargon, Making Pretty Sounds In The Air.

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.

And Some Days, He Went On, Were Days Of Hearing Every Trump And Trill Of The Universe. Some Days Were Good For Tasting And Some For Touching. And Some Days Were Good For All The Senses At Once. This Day Now, He Nodded, Smelled As If A Great And Nameless Orchard Had Grown Up Overnight Beyond The Hills To Fill The Entire Visible Land With Its Warm Freshness. The Air Felt Like Rain, But There Were No Clouds.

You Have To Be Very Productive In Order To Become Excellent. You Have To Go Through A Poor Period And A Mediocre Period, And Then You Move Into Your Excellent Period. It May Be Very Well Be That Some Of You Have Done Quite A Bit Of Writing Already. You Maybe Ready To Move Into Your Good Period And Your Excellent Period. But You Shouldn't Be Surprised If It Becomes A Very Long Process.

You Must Never Name The Goal. You Must Never Tell Us The Target You're Hitting For. You Must Automatically Go Toward It Without Ever Naming It.

Most Members Of Congress Are Politicians. They're Bores. They're Damn Boring. They Have No Imagination, And They Don't Know How To Imagine The Future.

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.

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

There Are Two Races Of People -- Men And Women -- No Matter What Women's Libbers Would Have You Pretend. The Male Is Motivated By Toys And Science Because Men Are Born With No Purpose In The Universe Except To Procreate. There Is Lots Of Time To Kill Beyond That. They've Got To Find Work. Men Have No Inherent Center To Themselves Beyond Procreating. Women, However, Are Born With A Center. They Can Create The Universe, Mother It, Teach It, Nurture It. Men Read Science Fiction To Build The Future. Women Don't Need To Read It. They Are The Future.

How Many Times Can A Man Go Down And Still Be Alive?

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.

Trending Author

Stefanie Powers

Zack De La Rocha

Russell M. Nelson

Category