Background Image

...

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.

-Ray Bradbury

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Shut The Door, They're

Ray Bradbury

...

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.

Views: 25417

Topic

More From Ray Bradbury

This Is The Result Of Six Billion Years Of Evolution. Tonight, We Have Given The Lie To Gravity.we Have Reached For The Stars.

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

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

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.

You Can Write A Short Story In Two Hours. Two Hours A Day, You Have A Novel In A Year

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

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

You Either Have An Imaginative Mind Or You Don't. All Of My Writing Is God-given. I Don't Write My Stories - They Write Themselves.

When The Wind Is Right, A Faint Odor Of Kerosene Is Exhaled From Senator Mccarthy.

I've Never Worked A Day In My Life. The Joy Of Writing Has Propelled Me From Day To Day And Year To Year. I Want You To Envy Me, My Joy. Get Out Of Here Tonight And Say: 'am I Being Joyful?' And If You've Got A Writer's Block, You Can Cure It This Evening By Stopping Whatever You're Writing And Doing Something Else. You Picked The Wrong Subject.

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

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

He Glanced Back At The Wall. How Like A Mirror, Too, Her Face. Impossible; For How Many People Did You Know Who Reflected Your Own Light To You? People Were More Often--he Searched For A Simile, Found One In His Work--torches, Blazing Away Until They Whiffed Out. How Rarely Did Other People's Faces Take Of You And Throw Back To You Your Own Expression, Your Own Innermost Trembling Thought?

Old Men Only Lie In Wait For People To Ask Them To Talk. Then They Rattle On Like A Rusty Elevator Wheezing Up A Shaft.

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.

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.

... Bums On The Outside, Libraries Inside.

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.

I Don't Try To Describe The Future. I Try To Prevent It.

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.

Acting Without Knowing Takes You Right Off The Cliff.

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

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.

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

You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

Inspiration To Write

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.

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.

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

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.

You Grow Ravenous. You Run Fevers. You Know Exhilarations. You Can't Sleep At Night, Because Your Beast-creature Ideas Want Out And Turn You In Your Bed. It Is A Grand Way To Live.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Disbelief Is Catching. It Rubs Off On People.

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 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.

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.

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

A Conglomerate Heap Of Trash, That's What I Am. But It Burns With A High Flame.

Heaven Is A House With Porch Lights.

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

My Business Is To Prevent The Future.

Without The Library, You Have No Civilization.

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

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

Can't You Recognize The Human In The Inhuman?

Martian Chronicles

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

Fahrenheit 451 Book

Teachers Are To Inspire; Librarians Are To Fulfill.

These Are All Novels, All About People That Never Existed, The People That Read Them It Makes Them Unhappy With Their Own Lives. Makes Them Want To Live In Other Ways They Can Never Really Be.

And There, Row Upon Row, With The Soft Gleam Of Flowers Opened At Morning, With The Light Of This June Sun Glowing Through A Faint Skin Of Dust, Would Stand The Dandelion Wine. Peer Through It At The Wintry Day - The Snow Melted To Grass, The Trees Were Reinhabitated With Bird, Leaf, And Blossoms Like A Continent Of Butterflies Breathing On The Wind. And Peering Through, Color Sky From Iron To Blue. Hold Summer In Your Hand, Pour Summer In A Glass, A Tiny Glass Of Course, The Smallest Tingling Sip For Children; Change The Season In Your Veins By Raising Glass To Lip And Tilting Summer In

My Stories Run Up And Bite Me On The Leg - I Respond By Writing Down Everything That Goes On During The Bite. When I Finish, The Idea Lets Go And Runs Off.

We Travel For Romance, We Travel For Architecture, And We Travel To Be Lost.

I Laugh Until I Weep And Weep Until I Smile

If You Have To Ask Yourself Whether Or Not You Love A Girl Or You Love A Boy, Forget It. You Don't.

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.

Friendship Is An Island That You Retreat To And You All Fall On The Floor And Laugh At All The Other Ninnies That Don't Have Enough Brains To Have Your Good Taste.

I Spent Three Days A Week For 10 Years Educating Myself In The Public Library, And It's Better Than College.

Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.

It Was A Pleasure To Burn.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Learn To Let Go

Digression Is The Soul Of Wit. Take The Philosophic Asides Away From Dante, Milton Or Hamlet's Father's Ghost And What Stays Is Dry Bones.

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!

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

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.

We Cannot Tell The Precise Moment When Friendship Is Formed. As In Filling A Vessel Drop By Drop, There Is At Last A Drop Which Makes It Run Over; So In A Series Of Kindnesses There Is At Last One Which Makes The Heart Run Over.

For These Beings, Fall Is Ever The Normal Season, The Only Weather, There Be No Choice Beyond. Where Do They Come From? The Dust. Where Do They Go? The Grave. Does Blood Stir Their Veins? No: The Night Wind. What Ticks In Their Head? The Worm. What Speaks From Their Mouth? The Toad. What Sees From Their Eye? The Snake. What Hears With Their Ear? The Abyss Between The Stars. They Sift The Human Storm For Souls, Eat Flesh Of Reason, Fill Tombs With Sinners. They Frenzy Forth. Such Are The Autumn People.

Ah, Art! Ah, Life! The Pendulum Swinging Back And Forth, From Complex To Simple, Again To Complex. From Romantic To Realistic, Back To Romantic.

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

I’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 Have Total Recall. I Remember Being Born. I Remember Being In The Womb, I Remember Being Inside. Coming Out Was Great.

All Flesh Is One: What Matter Scores; Or Color Of The Suit Or If The Helmet Glints With Blue Or Gold? All Is One Bold Achievement, All Is Fine Spring-found-again-in-autumn Day When Juices Run In Antelopes Along Our Blood, And Green Our Flag, Forever Green...

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

The Critics Are Generally Wrong, Or They're Fifteen, Twenty Years Late. It's A Great Shame. They Miss Out On A Lot.

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

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.

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.

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.

Good To Evil Seems Evil

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

God, Here And There, Makes Madness A Calling.

You Feed Yourself. Make Sure You Have All The Information, Whether It's Aesthetic, Scientific, Mathematical, I Don't Care What It Is. Then You Walk Away From It And Let It Ferment. You Ignore It And Pretend You Don't Care. Next Thing You Know, The Answer Comes.

And They Were All, When Their Souls Grew Warm, Poets.

In Science Fiction, We Dream. In Order To Colonize In Space, To Rebuild Our Cities, Which Are So Far Out Of Whack, To Tackle Any Number Of Problems, We Must Imagine The Future, Including The New Technologies That Are Required.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Mr. Montag, You Are Looking At A Coward. I Saw The Way Things Were Going A Long Time Back. I Said Nothing. I Am One Of The Innocents Who Could Have Spoken Up And Out When No One Would Listen To The 'guilty,' But I Did Not Speak And Thus Became Guilty Myself.

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.

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

Evil Has Only The Power We Give It.

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

Martian Chronicles

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

But No Man's A Hero To Himself.

The Blizzard Doesn't Last Forever; It Just Seems So.

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

You Let The Story Cool Off And Then, Instead Of Rewriting It, You Relive It.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Thinking Of You

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

I Don't Write Science Fiction. I've Only Done One Science Fiction Book And That's Fahrenheit 451, Based On Reality. Science Fiction Is A Depiction Of The Real. Fantasy Is A Depiction Of The Unreal.

No Use Going To Class Unless You Go To The Library.

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

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

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.

If We Try To Deny The Darkness In Our Souls Then We'll Become Completely Dark.

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

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

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.

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

I Don't See Myself As A Philosopher. That's Awfully Boring.

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.

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

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?

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

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

Martian Chronicles

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.

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

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.

In My Later Years I Have Looked In The Mirror Each Day And Found A Happy Person Staring Back. Occasionally I Wonder Why I Can Be So Happy. The Answer Is That Every Day Of My Life I've Worked Only For Myself And For The Joy That Comes From Writing And Creating. The Image In My Mirror Is Not Optimistic, But The Result Of Optimal Behavior.

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.

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.

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!'.

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.

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.

If God Treats You Well By Teaching You A Disastrous Lesson, You Never Forget It.

Every Day Is Christmas Day To A Dog.

Time Is So Strange And Life Is Twice As Strange.

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

Touch A Scientist And You Touch A Child.

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.

I'm Not A Science-fiction Writer. I've Only Written One Book That's Science Fiction, And That's Fahrenheit 451. All The Others Are Fantasy.

We Are Anthill Men Upon An Anthill World.

A Day Without Writing Was A Little Death.

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.

I'll Hold On To The World Tight Some Day. I've Got One Finger On It Now; That's A Beginning.

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

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?

You Don't Have To Burn Books To Destroy A Culture. Just Get People To Stop Reading Them.

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.

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

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.

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

I Don't Decide. My Secret Self Decides. I Just Go With My Subconscious. If It Wants To Do A Poem, I Do A Poem, And If It Wants To Do A Play, I Do A Play. So I'm Not In Charge, I'm Not In Control.

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

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

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 Feel Like I’ve Been Saving Up A Lot Of Things, And I Don’t Know What.

To Solve The Drug Problem, We Have To Start At The Root - First Grade. If A Boy Has All The Toys In His Head That Reading Can Give Him, And You Hook Him Into Science Fiction, Then You've Got The Future Secured.

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!

Men Read Science Fiction To Build The Future. Women Don't Need To Read It. They Are The Future.

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

I Want To Hold Onto This Funny Thing. God, It's Gotten Big On Me. I Don't Know What It Is. I'm So Damned Unhappy, I'm So Mad, And I Don't Know Why. I Feel Like I'm Putting On Weight. I Feel Fat. I Feel Like I'm Saving A Lot Of Things, And I Don't Know What. I Might Even Start Reading Books.

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

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

The Automobile Is The Most Dangerous Weapon In Our Society - Cars Kill More Than Wars Do.

I'm Not Really Dying Today. No Person Ever Died That Had A Family. I'll Be Around A Long Time. A Thousand Years From Now, A Whole Township Of My Offspring Will Be Biting Sour Apples In The Gumwood Shade.

Everything Is Generated Through Your Own Will Power.

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

But Souls Can't Be Sold. They Can Only Be Lost And Never Found Again.

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.

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

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

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.

Science And Religion Have To Go Hand In Hand With The Mystery, Because There's A Certain Point Beyond Which You Say, "there Are No Answers."

I Discovered Me In The Library. I Went To Find Me In The Library.

Writing Can Be Described In Two Verbs: Throw Up And Clean Up.

Gardening Is The Handiest Excuse For Being A Philosopher. Nobody Guesses, Nobody Accuses, Nobody Knows, But There You Are, Plato In The Peonies, Socrates Force-growing His Own Hemlock. A Man Toting A Sack Of Blood Manure Across His Lawn Is Kin To Atlas Letting The World Spin Easy On His Shoulder.

I Wonder How Many Men, Hiding Their Youngness, Rise As I Do, Saturday Mornings, Filled With The Hope That Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam And Daffy Duck Will Be There Waiting As Our One True Always And Forever Salvation?

Night Had Come On Like The Closing Of A Great But Gentle Eye.

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

You Must Stay Drunk On Writing So Reality Cannot Destroy You.

Half The Fun Of The Travel Is The Esthetic Of Lostness.

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.

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?

They Whispered To Caesar That He Was Mortal, Then Sold Daggers At Half-price In The Grand March Sale.

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

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.

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

Trending Author

G. Gordon Liddy

Yusef Komunyakaa

Category