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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.

-Ray Bradbury

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Since Everything Is But

Ray Bradbury

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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.

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Do What You Love, Don't Do Anything Else.

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.

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

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.

I Wake Up In The Morning And I Lie In Bed, And It's The Time I Call "the Theater Of Morning." All These Thoughts Run Around In My Head, Between My Ears When I'm Waking Up. It's Not A Dream State, But It's Not Completely Awake Either. So All These Metaphors Run Around And Then I Pick One And I Get Out Of Bed And I Do It. I'm Very Lucky.

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 Witch Is Born Out Of The True Hungers Of Her Time,” She Said. “i Was Born Out Of New York. The Things That Are Most Wrong Here Summoned Me. ("drink Entire: Against The Madness Of Crowds")

His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

There Must Be Something In Books, Something We Can’t Imagine, To Make A Woman Stay In A Burning House; There Must Be Something There. You Don’t Stay For Nothing.

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

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

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.

You Have To Learn To Take Rejection Not As An Indication Of Personal Failing But As A Wrong Address.

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.

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?

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.'

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.

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!)

"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?"

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

Way Out In The Country Tonight He Could Smell The Pumpkins Ripening Toward The Knife And The Triangle Eye And The Singeing Candle.

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.

When I Started Writing Seriously, I Made The Major Discovery Of My Life - That I Am Right And Everybody Else Is Wrong If They Disagree With Me. What A Great Thing To Learn: Don't Listen To Anyone Else, And Always Go Your Own Way.

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.

Everyone Has A Telephone. Whether They Can Afford It Or Not. It's One Of Those Things That People Have, Regardless Of Their Income.

Putting Out The Stars And Extinguishing The Sun.

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.

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

If You Know How To Read, You Have A Complete Education About Life, Then You Know How To Vote Within A Democracy. But If You Don't Know How To Read, You Don't Know How To Decide. That's The Great Thing About Our Country - We're A Democracy Of Readers, And We Should Keep It That Way.

I Laugh Until I Weep And Weep Until I Smile

The Only Good Writing Is Intuitive Writing. It Would Be A Big Bore If You Knew Where It Was Going. It Has To Be Exciting, Instantaneous And It Has To Be A Surprise. Then It All Comes Blurting Out And It’s Beautiful. I’ve Had A Sign By My Typewriter For 25 Years Now Which Reads, ‘don’t Think!’

Men Throw Huge Shadows On The Lawn, Don't They? Then, All Their Lives, They Try To Run To Fit The Shadows. But The Shadows Are Always Longer.

When I Was A Young Man, I Didn't Think About Having A Family. My Wife And I Were Too Poor To Have Babies. Then All Of A Sudden, One Came Along And Scared The Hell Out Of Us Because We Had No Money. Once The Baby Arrives, You Make Do Somehow. You Fall In Love With The Baby And Life Adjusts Itself. You Find You Don't Need As Much Money As You Thought. When That Happens, You Can Ask The Questions That Should Have Come Before The Baby.

Falling In Love

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 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.

Ours Is A Culture And A Time Immensely Rich In Trash As It Is In Treasures.

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

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

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

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

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

I Don't Talk Things, Sir. I Talk The Meaning Of Things.

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

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!'.

The Great Fun In My Life Has Been Getting Up Every Morning And Rushing To The Typewriter Because Some New Idea Has Hit Me.

Marriage Made People Old And Familiar, While Still Young.

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

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

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")

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

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

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

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

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

My Tunes And Numbers Are Here. They Have Filled My Years, The Years When I Refused To Die. And In Order To Do That I Wrote, I Wrote, I Wrote, At Noon Or 3:00 A.m. So As Not To Be Dead.

I Have Two Rules In Life - To Hell With It, Whatever It Is, And Get Your Work Done.

And What, You Ask, Does Writing Teach Us? First And Foremost, It Reminds Us That We Are Alive And That It Is A Gift And A Privilege, Not A Right.

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.

I Have Fun With Ideas; I Play With Them.

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

Miraculously, Smoke Curled Out Of His Own Mouth, His Nose, His Ears, His Eyes, As If His Soul Had Been Extinguished Within His Lungs At The Very Moment The Sweet Pumpkin Gave Up Its Incensed Ghost.

The Most Improbable Tales Can Be Made Believable, If Your Reader, Through His Sense, Feels Certain That He Stands At The Middle Of Events.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Heaven Is A House With Porch Lights.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

Write What You Love And Love What You Write.

Doing What You Love

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.

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

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

I Am A Dedicated Madman, And That Becomes Its Own Training. If You Can't Resist, If The Typewriter Is Like Candy To You, You Train Yourself For A Lifetime. Every Single Day Of Your Life, Some Wild New Thing To Be Done. You Write To Please Yourself. You Write For The Joy Of Writing. Then Your Public Reads You And It Begins To Gather Around Your Selling A Potato Peeler In An Alley, You Know. The Enthusiasm, The Joy Itself Draws Me. So That Means Every Day Of My Life I've Written. When The Joy Stops, I'll Stop Writing.

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.

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

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.

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

That Country Whose People Are Autumn People, Thinking Only Autumn Thoughts.

But No Man's A Hero To Himself. I've Lived With Me A Lifetime. I Know Everything Worth Knowing About Myself--" ~something Wicked This Way Comes

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

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.

The Library Is The Biggest Cracker Box Factory In The World. The More You Eat, The More You Want.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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?

I Like To Watch People. Sometimes I Ride The Subway All Day And Look At Them And Listen To Them. I Just Want To Figure Out Who They Are And What They Want And Where They're Going.

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

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

...trees To Cool The Towns In The Boiling Summer, Trees To Hold Back The Winter Winds. There Were So Many Things A Tree Could Do: Add Color, Provide Shade, Drop Fruit, Or Become A Children's Playground, A Whole Sky Universe To Climb And Hang From; An Architecture Of Food And Pleasure, That Was A Tree. But Most Of All The Trees Would Distill An Icy Air For The Lungs, And A Gentle Rustling For The Ear When You Lay Nights In Your Snowy Bed And Were Gentled To Sleep By The Sound.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is Know Who You Are.

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

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

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.

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.

My Business Is To Prevent The Future.

What's The Point Of Having A Library Full Of Books You've Already Read?

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

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.

I Believe In Darwin And God Together.

Any Man Who Can Take A Tv Wall Apart And Put It Back Together Again, And Most Men Can Nowadays, Is Happier Than Any Man Who Tries To Slide-rule, Measure, And Equate The Universe, Which Just Won't Be Measured Or Equated Without Making Man Feel Bestial And Lonely.

Zest. Gusto. How Rarely One Hears These Words Used. How Rarely Do We See People Living, Or For That Matter, Creating, By Them. Yet If I Were Asked To Name The Most Important Items In A Writer's Make-up, The Things That Shape His Material And Rush Him Along The Road He Wants To Go. I Would Only Warn Him To Look To His Zest, See To His Gusto.

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.

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

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

Falling In Love

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

You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

Inspiration To Write

May You Be In Love Every Day For The Next 20,000 Days. And Out Of That Love, Remake A World.

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

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

The Important Thing Is To Be In Love With Something.

Important Things

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.

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.

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.

Creativity Is A Continual Surprise.

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

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.

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

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

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

What Are The Best Things And The Worst Things In Your Life, And When Are You Going To Get Around To Whispering Or Shouting Them?

Do You Understand Now Why Books Are Hated And Feared? Because They Reveal The Pores On The Face Of Life. The Comfortable People Want Only The Faces Of The Full Moon, Wax, Faces Without Pores, Hairless, Expressionless.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I Define Science Fiction As The Art Of The Possible. Fantasy Is The Art Of The Impossible.

Kerosene," He Said, Because The Silence Had Lengthened, "is Nothing But Perfume To Me.

We Can't Live Alone In Any Society. But The Best Way To Help A Society Or Group, Is To Be The Best Individual In It That We Can Be.

From This Outer Edge Of His Life, Looking Back, There Was Only One Remorse, And That Was Only That He Wished To Go On Living. Did All Dying People Feel This Way, As If They Had Never Lived? Did Life Seem That Short, Indeed, Over And Done Before You Took A Breath? Did It Seem This Abrupt And Impossible To Everyone, Or Only To Himself, Here, Now, With A Few Hours Left To Him For Thought And Deliberation?

Love Is Easy, And I Love Writing.

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

The Zipper Displaces The Button And A Man Lacks Just That Much Time To Think While Dressing At Dawn, A Philosophical Hour, And Thus A Melancholy Hour.

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.

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

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

The Stars Are Yours, If You Have The Head, The Hands, And The Heart For 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.

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

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

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.

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. Acting Without Knowing Takes You Right Off The Cliff.

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

Thinking Of You

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.

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.

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

A Book Has Got Smell. A New Book Smells Great. An Old Book Smells Even Better. An Old Book Smells Like Ancient Egypt.

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