Background Image

...

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.

-Ray Bradbury

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Huge Round Lunar

Ray Bradbury

...

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.

Views: 9

Topic

More From Ray Bradbury

I'm Inclined To Believe You Need The Psychiatrist.

Hollywood Was A Good Influence Because I Was Madly In Love With Films, And The Films Had A Direct Influence On Me.

Everyone Must Leave Something Behind When He Dies, My Grandfather Said. A Child Or A Book Or A Painting Or A House Or A Wall Built Or A Pair Of Shoes Made. Or A Garden Planted. Something Your Hand Touched Some Way So Your Soul Has Somewhere To Go When You Die, And When People Look At That Tree Or That Flower You Planted, You're There.

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

Love Is Easy, And I Love Writing.

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

Do Three Things Each Night Before You Go To Bed: Read A Poem, Read A Short Story, Read An Essay.

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.

And When He Died, I Suddenly Realized I Wasn't Crying For Him At All, But For The Things He Did. I Cried Because He Would Never Do Them Again.

Americans Are Far More Remarkable Than We Give Ourselves Credit For. We've Been So Busy Damning Ourselves For Years. We've Done It All, And Yet We Don't Take Credit For It.

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.

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.

The Father Hesitated Only A Moment. He Felt The Vague Pain In His Chest. If I Run, He Thought, What Will Happen? Is Death Important? No. Everything That Happens Before Death Is What Counts. And We've Done Fine Tonight. Even Death Can't Spoil It.

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.

...we're Allotted A Little Space On Earth And That We Survive In That Wilderness That Can Take Back What It Has Given, As Easily As Blowing Its Breath On Us Or Sending The Sea To Tell Us We Are Not So Big. When We Forget How Close The Wilderness Is In The Night, My Grandpa Said, Someday It Will Come In And Get Us, For We Will Have Forgotten How Terrible And Real It Can Be.

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.

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.

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

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

Predicting The Future

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

Action Is Hope. There Is No Hope Without Action.

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.

If You Can't Read And Write You Can't Think. Your Thoughts Are Dispersed If You Don't Know How To Read And Write. You've Got To Be Able To Look At Your Thoughts On Paper And Discover What A Fool You Were.

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

Don't Think About Things, Just Do Them; Don't Predict Them, Just Make Them.

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.

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

What Should I Do?" "throw Up In Your Typewriter Every Morning." "yeah." "clean Up Every Noon.

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

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

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.

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

Surprise Is Where Creativity Comes In.

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

Learn To Let Go

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.

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

Science Fiction Is A Great Way To Pretend You Are Writing About The Future When In Reality You Are Attacking The Recent Past And The Present. You Can Criticize Communists, Racists, Fascists Or Any Other Clear And Present Danger, And They Can't Imagine You Are Writing About Them.

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

Good To Evil Seems Evil

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

... Bums On The Outside, Libraries Inside.

[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.

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.

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

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 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?

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!

And Suddenly Everything, Absolutely Everything, Was There.

You Should Love Literature. You Should Live In The Library. Forget About Films.

I Don't Tell Anyone How To Write And No One Tells Me.

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!

I Shall Remain On Mars And Read A Book.

It Is Good To Renew One's Wonder, Said The Philosopher. Space Travel Has Again Made Children Of Us All.

Evil Has Only The Power We Give It.

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

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

Love What You Do And Do What You Love.

The Only Science Fiction I Have Written Is Fahrenheit 451. It's The Art Of The Possible. Science Fiction Is The Art Of The Possible. It Could Happen. It Has Happened.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

The Psychiatrist Wants To Know Why I Go Out And Hike Around In The Forests And Watch The Birds And Collect Butterflies. I'll Show You My Collection Some Day.good.they Want To Know What I Do With My Time. I Tell Them That Sometimes I Just Sit And Think. But I Won't Tell Them What. I've Got Them Running. And Sometimes, I Tell Them, I Like To Put My Head Back, Like This, And Let The Rain Fall In My Mouth. It Tastes Just Like Wine. Have You Ever Tried It?

I Believe In Darwin And God Together.

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

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.

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.

When I Was A Young Writer If You Went To A Party And Told Somebody You Were A Science-fiction Writer You Would Be Insulted. They Would Call You Flash Gordon All Evening, Or Buck Rogers.

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

Oh, What Strange Wonderful Clocks Women Are. They Nest In Time. They Make The Flesh That Holds Fast And Binds Eternity. They Live Inside The Gift, Know Power, Accept, And Need Not Mention It. Why Speak Of Time When You Are Time, And Shape The Universal Moments, As They Pass, Into Warmth And Action?

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

If Teachers And Grammar School Editors Find My Jawbreaker Sentences Shatter Their Mushmilk Teeth, Let Them Eat Stale Cake Dunked In Weak Tea Of Their Own Ungodly Manufacture.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

Thinking Of You

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

Tell Us Again, For We Forget, That Work Done Without Love Is Stillborn, Mindless, And Lost In The Very Hour Of Its Deliverance.

All Isn't Well With The World.

I Love The Musical Form Of Books. It's A Different Way Of Doing Things, It's Very Beautiful. You're Able To Sing Things Instead Of Saying Them. So What The Heck - Why Not Do Them?

I'll Be Damned If Death Wears My Sadness For Glad Rags.

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

I Like To Smell Things And Look At Things, And Sometimes Stay Up All Night, Walking, And Watch The Sun Rise.

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.

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.

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

Forget Them. Burn All, Burn Everything. Fire Is Bright And Fire Is Clean.

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!’

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.'

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.

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.

My Religion Encompasses All Religions. I Believe In God, I Believe In The Universe. I Believe You Are God, I Believe I Am God; I Believe The Earth Is God And The Universe Is God. We're All God.

Don't Talk About It; Write.

Halloween. Sly Does It. Tiptoe Catspaws. Slide And Creep. But Why? What For? How? Who? When! Where Did It All Begin? 'you Don't Know, Do You?' Asks Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud Climbing Out Under The Pile Of Leaves Under The Halloween Tree. 'you Don't Really Know!'

Get Rid Of Those Friends Of Yours Who Make Fun Of You And Don't Believe In You. And When You Leave Here Tonight, Go Home, Make A Phone Call And Fire Them. Anyone That Doesn't Believe In You And Your Future, To Hell With Them.

Hello!" He Said Hello And Then Said, "what Are You Up To Now?" "i'm Still Crazy. The Rain Feels Good. I Love To Walk In It. "i Don't Think I'd Like That," He Said. "you Might If You Tried." "i Never Have." She Licked Her Lips. "rain Even Tastes Good." "what Do You Do, Go Around Trying Everything Once?" He Asked. "sometimes Twice.

Journalism Keeps You Planted In The Earth.

It Is A Lie To Write In Such Way As To Be Rewarded By Fame Offered You By Some Snobbish Quasi-literary Groups In The Intellectual Gazettes.

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.

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

Out Of The Nursery Into The College And Back Into The Nursery; There’s Your Intellectual Pattern For The Past Five Centuries Or More.

The Home Environment Can Undo A Lot You Try To Do At School.

No Person Ever Died That Had A Family.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Everything Of Mine Is Permeated With My Love Of Ideas-both Big And Small. It Doesn't Matter What It Is, As Long As It Grabs Me And Holds Me, Facinates Me. And Then I'll Run Out And Something About It... I Write For Fun.

I Had Decided To Be A Magician Well Before I Decided To Be A Writer. I Was The Little Boy Who Would Get Up On-stage And Do Magic Wearing A Fake Mustache, Which Would Fall Off During The Performance. I'm Still Trying To Perform Those Tricks. Now I Do It With Writing.

The First Thing A Writer Should Be Is - Excited. He Should Be A Thing Of Fevers And Enthusiasms. Without Such Vigor, He Might As Well Be Out Picking Peaches Or Digging Ditches; God Knows It'd Be Better For His Health.

Write A Short Story Every Week. It's Not Possible To Write 52 Bad Short Stories In A Row.

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

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

Like Every Beginner, I Have Thought You Could Beat, Pummel And Thrash An Idea Into Existence. Under Such Treatment, Of Course, Any Decent Idea Folds Up Its Paws, Turns On Its Back, Fixes Its Eyes On Eternity, And Dies.

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.

Science-fiction Balances You On The Cliff. Fantasy Shoves You Off.

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.

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

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

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

A Day Without Writing Was A Little Death.

Remember, Montag, We're The Happiness Boys. We Stand Against The Small Tide Of Those Who Want To Make Everyone Unhappy With Conflicting Theory And Thought.

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.

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

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.

I've Grown Up On A Diet Of Metaphors. If Young Writers Would Find Those Writers Who Can Give Them Metaphors By The Bushel And The Peck, Then They'll Become Better Writers - To Learn How To Capsualize Things And Present Them In Metaphorical Form.

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.

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.

Facts Are Not Interesting To Me.

I'll Tell You," Said Beatty, Smiling At His Cards. "that Made You For A Little While A Drunkard. Read A Few Lines And Off You Go Over The Cliff. Bang, You're Ready To Blow Up The World, Chop Off Heads, Knock Down Women And Children, Destroy Authority. I Know. I've Been Through It All.

The Real Fear Isn't Rejection, But That There Won't Be Enough Time In Your Life To Write All The Stories That You Have In You.

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!)

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Touch A Scientist And You Touch A Child.

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.

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.

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.

Write What You Love And Love What You Write.

Doing What You Love

Facts Quite Often, I Fear To Confess, Like Lawyers, Put Me To Sleep At Noon. Not Theories, However. Theories Are Invigorating And Tonic. Give Me An Ounce Of Fact And I Will Produce You A Ton Of Theory By Tea This Afternoon. That Is, After All, My Job.

The Very First Experiments With Building Rockets And Firing Them Off Were Carried Out By Students At Cal Tech In 1937, '38 And '39. And Later These People Put Together These Jet Propulsion Labs In Pasadena And Wound Up Sending Aircraft And Spacecraft To The Moon. So It All Began Very Primitively With Love.

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

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

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.

Work Is The Only Answer. I Have Three Rules To Live By. One, Get Your Work Done. If That Doesn't Work, Shut Up And Drink Your Gin. And When All Else Fails, Run Like Hell!

Rules To Live By

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

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

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.

All Education Is Self-discovery.

Write. Don't Think. Relax.

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

Fahrenheit 451 Book

Dad," Said Will, His Voice Very Faint. "are You A Good Person?" "to You And Your Mother, Yes, I Try. But No Man's A Hero To Himself. I've Lived With Me A Lifetime, Will. I Know Everything Worth Knowing About Myself-" "and, Adding It All Up...?" "the Sum? As They Come And Go, And I Mostly Sit Very Still And Tight, Yes, I'm All Right.

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.

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

"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?"

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.

You Don't Have To Turn On The Tv Set. You Don't Have To Work On The Internet. It's Up To You.

Work. Don't Think. Relax.

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.

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.

I Never Went To College, So I Went To The Library.

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

The Sun Rose Yellow As A Lemon.the Sky Was Round And Blue.the Birds Looped Clear Water Songs In The Air.will And Jim Leaned From Their Windows.nothing Had Changed.except The Look In Jim's Eyes.last Night. . . Said Will. Did Or Didn't It Happen?

I've Never Been In Charge Of My Stories, They've Always Been In Charge Of Me. As Each New One Has Called To Me, Ordering Me To Give It Voice And Form And Life, I've Followed The Advice I've Shared With Other Writers Over The Years: Jump Off The Cliff And Build Your Wings On The Way Down.

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.

Putting Out The Stars And Extinguishing The Sun.

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

Falling In Love

Monday Burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, Burn 'em To Ashes, Then Burn The Ashes. That's Our Official Slogan.

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.

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.

My Goal Is To Entertain Myself And Others.

God, Here And There, Makes Madness A Calling.

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

There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book. And The World Is Full Of People Running About With Lit Matches. Every Minority, Be It Baptist/unitarian, Irish/italian/octogenarian/zen Buddhist, Zionist/seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/republican, Mattachine/foursquaregospel Feels It Has The Will, The Right, The Duty To Douse The Kerosene, Light The Fuse. Every Dimwit Editor Who Sees Himself As The Source Of All Dreary Blanc-mange Plain Porridge Unleavened Literature, Licks His Guillotine And Eyes The Neck Of Any Author Who Dares To Speak Above A Whisper Or Write Above A Nursery Rhyme.

I Came On The Old And Best Ways Of Writing Through Ignorance And Experiment And Was Startled When Truths Leaped Out Of Brushes Like Quail Before Gunshot.

Television Is Very Dangerous. Because It Repeats And Repeats And Repeats Our Disasters, Instead Of Our Triumphs.

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 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.

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.

Long Before You Knew What Death Was You Were Wishing It On Someone Else.

Beware The Autumn People

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.

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.

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

Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.

Trending Author

Augusto Roa Bastos

Category