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

-Ray Bradbury

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The Most Improbable Tales

Ray Bradbury

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

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For About 150 Days A Year In Venice, The Sun Doesn't Show Through The Mist Until Noon.

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.

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

If You Stuff Yourself Full Of Poems, Essays, Plays, Stories, Novels, Films, Comic Strips, Magazines, Music, You Automatically Explode Every Morning Like Old Faithful. I Have Never Had A Dry Spell In My Life, Mainly Because I Feed Myself Well, To The Point Of Bursting. I Wake Early And Hear My Morning Voices Leaping Around In My Head Like Jumping Beans. I Get Out Of Bed To Trap Them Before They Escape.

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

I Am Madness Maddened When It Comes To Books, Writers, And The Great Granary Silos Where Their Wits Are Stored.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Don't Talk About It; Write.

One Year Halloween Came On October 24, Three Hours After Midnight. At That Time, James Nightshade Of 97 Oak Street Was Thirteen Years, Eleven Months, Twenty-three Days Old. Next Door, William Halloway Was Thirteen Years, Eleven Months, And Twenty-four Days Old. Both Touched Toward Fourteen; It Almost Trembled In Their Hands. And That Was The October Week When They Grew Up Overnight, And Were Never So Young Any More.

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.

He Felt His Smile Slide Away, Melt, Fold Over And Down On Itself Like A Tallow Skin, Like The Stuff Of A Fantastic Candle Burning Too Long And Now Collapsing And Now Blown Out.

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

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

A Book Is A Loaded Gun In The House Next Door...who Knows Who Might Be The Target Of The Well-read Man?

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

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

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

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

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

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... Are In The World, But The Only Way The Average Chap Will Ever See Ninety-nine Per Cent Of Them Is In A Book.

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.

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!’

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

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

Falling In Love

My Characters Talk To One Another, And When It Reaches A Certain Pitch Of Excitement I Jump Out Of Bed And Run And Trap Them Before They Are Gone.

Through Neglect, Ignorance, Or Inability, The New Intellectual Borgias Cram Hairballs Down Our Throats And Refuse Us The Convulsion That Could Make Us Well. They Have Forgotten, If They Ever Knew, The Ancient Knowledge That Only By Being Truly Sick Can One Regain Health. Even Beasts Know When It Is Good And Proper To Throw Up. Teach Me How To Be Sick Then, In The Right Time And Place, So That I May Again Walk In The Fields And With The Wise And Smiling Dogs Know Enough To Chew Sweet Grass.

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.

But Remember That The Captain Belongs To The Most Dangerous Enemy To Truth And Freedom, The Solid Unmoving Cattle Of The Majority

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

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.

Love Is The Answer To Everything. It's The Only Reason To Do Anything.

It Doesn't Matter What You Do...so Long As You Change Something From The Way It Was Before You Touched It Into Something That's Like You After You Take Your Hands Away.

Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.

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.

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

Learn To Let Go

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

When I Graduated From High School I Couldn't Go To College, So I Went To The Library 3 Days A Week For 10 Years.

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

There Was Her Face, Like A Summer Peach, Beautiful And Warm, And The Light Of The Candles Reflected In Her Dark Eyes. [he] Held His Breath. The Entire World Waited And Held Its Breath.

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

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

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

A Book Is A Loaded Gun.

If You Learn Only Methods, You'll Be Tied To Your Methods, But If You Learn Principles You Can Devise Your Own Methods.

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.

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.

Don’t Worry About Things. Don’t Push. Just Do Your Work And You’ll Survive. The Important Thing Is To Have A Ball, To Be Joyful, To Be Loving And To Be Explosive. Out Of That Comes Everything And You Grow.

Dandelion Wine. The Words Were Summer On The Tongue. The Wine Was Summer Caught And Stoppered...sealed Away For Opening On A January Day With Snow Falling Fast And The Sun Unseen For Weeks.

My Business Is To Prevent The Future.

And Some Day Well Remember So Much That Well Build The Biggest Goddam Steamshovel In History And Dig The Biggest Grave Of All Time And Shove War In And Cover It Up.

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.

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.'

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.

There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book. And The World Is Full Of People Running About With Lit Matches.

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

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

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.

"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?"

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Is Too Much Government Today. We've Got To Remember The Government Should Be By The People, Of The People, And For The People.

We Are All . . . Children Of This Universe. Not Just Earth, Or Mars, Or This System, But The Whole Grand Fireworks. And If We Are Interested In Mars At All, It Is Only Because We Wonder Over Our Past And Worry Terribly About Our Possible Future.

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

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.

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.

How Talented Was Death. How Many Expressions And Manipulations Of Hand, Face, Body, No Two Alike.

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

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

I Don't Believe In Colleges And Universities.

Mysteries Abound Where Most We Seek For Answers.

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.

The Novel's Not Organized Like A Screenplay. If You Shot The Novel, You'd Have A Twelve-hour Movie.

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.

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.

There's No Use Going To School Unless Your Final Destination Is The Library.

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.

If You Enjoy Living, It Is Not Difficult To Keep The Sense Of Wonder.

Positive Thinking

Teachers Are To Inspire; Librarians Are To Fulfill.

Important Thing Is Not The Me That's Lying Here, But The Me That's Sitting On The Edge Of The Bed Looking Back At Me, And The Me That's Downstairs Cooking Supper, Or Out In The Garage Under The Car, Or In The Library Reading. All The New Parts, They Count. I'm Not Really Dying Today. No Person Ever Died That Had A Family.

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

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

Fahrenheit 451 Book

In Our Time The Search For Extraterrestrial Life Will Eventually Change Our Laws, Our Religions, Our Philosophies, Our Arts, Our Recreations, As Well As Our Sciences. Space, The Mirror, Waits For Life To Come Look For Itself There.

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

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

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

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

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!'

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

Go Out And Make Your Own Speeches. People Need You. Go On Tv. It Can Be Done. After You Speak Up A Few Times, People Say, "hey, We Got A Crazy Man In The Community," And They'll Begin Talking To You.

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

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 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.

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

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

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?

The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time. The World Rushed In A Circle And Turned On Its Axis And Time Was Busy Burning The Years And The People Anyway, Without Any Help From Him. So If He Burnt Things With The Firemen, And The Sun Burnt Time, That Meant Everything Burnt!

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?

Remember: Plot Is No More Than Footprints Left In The Snow After Your Characters Have Run By On Their Way To Incredible Destinations. Plot Is Observed After The Fact Rather Than Before. It Cannot Precede Action. It Is The Chart That Remains When An Action Is Through. That Is All Plot Ever Should Be. It Is Human Desire Let Run, Running, And Reaching A Goal. It Cannot Be Mechanical. It Can Only Be Dynamic.

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.

Thinking Little At All About Nothing In Particular.

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

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

Love. Fall In Love And Stay In Love. Write Only What You Love, And Love What You Write. The Key Word Is Love. You Have To Get Up In The Morning And Write Something You Love, Something To Live For.

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

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

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.

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

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

I Feel Like I Own All The Kids In The World Because, Since I've Never Grown Up Myself, All My Books Are Automatically For Children.

The Important Thing Is To Be In Love With Something.

Important Things

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.

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.

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

I Laugh Until I Weep And Weep Until I Smile

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

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 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.

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!

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.

Evil Has Only The Power We Give It.

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

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'm Not In Control Of My Muse. My Muse Does All The Work.

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

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.

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

That Country Where It Is Always Turning Late In The Year. That Country Where The Hills Are Fog And The Rivers Are Mist; Where Noons Go Quickly, Dusks And Twilights Linger, And Midnights Stay. That Country Composed In The Main Of Cellars, Sub-cellars, Coal-bins, Closets, Attics, And Pantries Faced Away From The Sun. That Country Whose People Are Autumn People, Thinking Only Autumn Thoughts. Whose People Passing At Night On The Empty Walks Sound Like Rain.

My Goal Is To Entertain Myself And Others.

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

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

God, How We Get Our Fingers In Each Other's Clay. That's Friendship, Each Playing The Potter To See What Shapes We Can Make Of Each Other.

Creativity Is A Continual Surprise.

Science Fiction Is Any Idea That Occurs In The Head And Doesn't Exist Yet, But Soon Will, And Will Change Everything For Everybody, And Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again. As Soon As You Have An Idea That Changes Some Small Part Of The World You Are Writing Science Fiction. It Is Always The Art Of The Possible, Never The Impossible.

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

I Know You've Heard It A Thousand Times Before. But It's True - Hard Work Pays Off. If You Want To Be Good, You Have To Practice, Practice, Practice. If You Don't Love Something, Then Don't Do It.

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

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.

It's Rare You Get An Idea From A Dream. I Can't Really Recall A Story That Ever Worked Out That Way. I Think In 35 Years Of Writing, That I've Ever Had A Dream That Held Up. They're Much Too Dislocated

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

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.

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

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?

We're All Watching Each Other, So There's No Chance For Censorship. The Main Problem Is The Idiot Tv. If You Watch Local News, Your Head Will Turn To Mush.

If You Hide Your Ignorance, No One Will Hit You And You'll Never Learn.

Programs Like 'jeopardy' And 'who Wants To Be A Millionaire' Are Ridiculous. They're The Stupidest Shows In History. They're Making Us Dumber. They Don't Give Us Information, They Give Us Facts, Factoids. You Don't Learn Who Napoleon Was And How He Was Motivated. You Learn What Year He Was Born, And When He Died. That's Useless.

Everything That Happens Before Death Is What Counts.

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 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.

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.

I Take This Continent With Me Into The Grave.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Once You Let Yourself Begin To Be Grown-up, You Face A World Full Of Problems You Can't Solve. The Politicians And Specialists - Adults, All - Have A Hard Enough Time Trying To Figure Out Where To Look. It Doesn't Have To Be That Way. The Greatest Solutions In Society Are Reached By Corporate Thinking, Ruled By A Motive To Either Make A Profit Or Go Out Of Business.

I Still Love Books. Nothing A Computer Can Do Can Compare To A Book. You Can't Really Put A Book On The Internet. Three Companies Have Offered To Put Books By Me On The Net, And I Said, 'if You Can Make Something That Has A Nice Jacket, Nice Paper With That Nice Smell, Then We'll Talk.' All The Computer Can Give You Is A Manuscript. People Don't Want To Read Manuscripts. They Want To Read Books. Books Smell Good. They Look Good. You Can Press It To Your Bosom. You Can Carry It In Your Pocket.

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

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.

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

Trying Everything

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.

Touch A Scientist And You Touch A Child.

There Is No Future For E-books, Because They Are Not Books. E-books Smell Like Burned Fuel.

The Gods Had Gone Away, And The Ritual Of The Religion Continued Senselessly, Uselessly.

Thank God For That. You Can Shut Them, Say, 'hold On A Moment.' You Play God To It. But Who Has Ever Torn Himself From The Claw That Encloses You When You Drop A Seed In A Tv Parlour? It Grows You Any Shape It Wishes! It Is An Environment As Real As The World. It Becomes And Is The Truth. Books Can Be Beaten Down With Reason. But With All My Knowledge And Scepticism, I Have Never Been Able To Argue With A One-hundred-piece Symphony Orchestra, Full Colour, Three Dimensions, And I Being In And Part Of Those Incredible Parlours.

Beware The Autumn People

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

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

Impossible; For How Many People Did You Know Who Refracted Your Own Light To You?

I Got A Statistic For You Right Now. Grab Your Pencil, Doug. There Are Five Billion Trees In The World. I Looked It Up. Under Every Tree Is A Shadow, Right? So, Then, What Makes Night? I'll Tell You: Shadows Crawling Out From Under Five Billion Trees! Think Of It! Shadows Running Around In The Air, Muddying The Waters You Might Say. If Only We Could Figure A Way To Keep Those Darn Five Billion Shadows Under Those Trees, We Could Stay Up Half The Night, Doug, Because There'd Be No Night!

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.

The Gift Of Life Is So Precious That We Should Feel An Obligation To Pay Back The Universe For The Gift Of Being Alive.

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

I'm Inclined To Believe You Need The Psychiatrist.

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.

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

..holding A Book But Reading The Empty Spaces.

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

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.

[his] Library Was A Fine Dark Place Bricked With Books, So Anything Could Happen There And Always Did. All You Had To Do Was Pull A Book From The Shelf And Open It And Suddenly The Darkness Was Not So Dark Anymore.

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

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

I Have Fun With Ideas; I Play With Them.

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

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