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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?

-Ray Bradbury

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The Psychiatrist Wants To

Ray Bradbury

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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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Love Is The Answer To Everything. It's The Only Reason To Do Anything. If You Don't Write Stories You Love, You'll Never Make It. If You Don't Write Stories That Other People Love, You'll Never Make It.

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

Don't Talk About It; Write.

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

I Don't Like Realism. We Already Know The Real Facts About Li[fe], Most Of The Basic Facts. I'm Not Interested In Repeating What We Already Know. We Know About Sex, About Violence, About Murder, About War. All These Things, By The Time We're 18, We're Up To Here. From There On We Need Interpreters. We Need Poets. We Need Philosophers. We Need Theologians, Who Take The Same Basic Facts And Work With Them And Help Us Make Do With Those Facts. Facts Alone Are Not Enough. It's Interpretation.

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.

The Television, That Insidious Beast, That Medusa Which Freezes A Billion People To Stone Every Night, Staring Fixedly, That Siren Which Called And Sang And Promised So Much And Gave, After All, So Little.

Only If The Third Necessary Thing Could Be Given Us. Number One, As I Said: Quality Of Information. Number Two: Leisure To Digest It. And Number Three: The Right To Carry Out Actions Based On What We Learn From The Interaction Of The First Two.

And Besides, I Like To Cry. After I Cry Hard It's Like It's Morning Again And I'm Starting The Day Over.

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

Can't You Recognize The Human In The Inhuman?

Martian Chronicles

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

I Believe The Universe Created Us - We Are An Audience For Miracles. In That Sense, I Guess, I'm Religious.

An Athlete May Run Ten Thousand Miles In Order To Prepare For One Hundred Yards. Quantity Gives Experience.

To Sum It All Up, If You Want To Write, If You Want To Create, You Must Be The Most Sublime Fool That God Ever Turned Out And Sent Rambling. You Must Write Every Single Day Of Your Life. You Must Write Dreadful Dumb Books And Glorious Books, And Let Them Wrestle In Beautiful Fights Inside Your Head, Vulgar One Moment, Brilliant The Next.

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

When You're Older You Want To Learn From Other People.

And He Remembered Thinking Then That If She Died, He Was Certain He Wouldn't Cry. For It Would Be The Dying Face Of An Unknown, A Street Face, A Newspaper Image, And It Was Suddenly So Very Wrong That He Had Begun To Cry, Not At Death But At The Thought Of Not Crying At Death, A Silly Empty Man Near A Silly Empty Woman.

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

My Business Is To Prevent The Future.

That's Life For You," Said Macdunn. "someone Always Waiting For Someone Who Never Comes Home. Always Someone Loving Some Thing More Than That Thing Loves Them. And After A While You Want To Destroy Whatever That Thing Is, So It Can't Hurt You No More.

I 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!

That's The Wonderful Thing About Man; He Never Gets So Discouraged Or Disgusted That He Gives Up Doing It All Over Again, Because He Knows Very Well It Is Important And Worth The Doing.

I Started Writing Every Day. I Never Stopped.

Writing Every Day

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

We're Going To Become The Martians When We Land There. When We Explore And Build Communities, We Become The Martians. That's A Wonderful Destiny For All Of Us.

You've Got To Love Libraries. You've Got To Love Books. You've Got To Love Poetry. You've Got To Love Everything About Literature. Then, You Can Pick The One Thing You Love Most And Write About It.

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

Science Is No More Than An Investigation Of A Miracle We Can Never Explain, And Art Is An Interpretation Of That Miracle.

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

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.

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

I Don't Believe In Government. I Hate Politics. I'm Against It. And I Hope That Sometime This Fall, We Can Destroy Part Of Our Government, And Next Year Destroy Even More Of It. The Less Government, The Happier I Will Be.

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

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.

"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?"

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Chock Them So ... 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.

I Believe In Darwin And God Together.

I Decided That Was The Greatest Idea I Had Ever Heard. I Started Writing Every Day. I Never Stopped.

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.

All Education Is Self-discovery.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.

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.

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

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?

We Have Too Many Cellphones. We've Got Too Many Internets. We Have Got To Get Rid Of Those Machines. We Have Too Many Machines Now.

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

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.

If You Have Moved Over Vast Territories And Dared To Love Silly Things, You Will Have Learned Even From The Most Primitive Items Collected And Put Aside In Your Life.

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.

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

The Rockets Set The Bony Meadows Afire, Turned Rock To Lava, Turned Wood To Charcoal, Transmuted Water To Steam, Made Sand And Silica Into Green Glass Which Lay Like Shattered Mirrors Reflecting The Invasion, All About. The Rockets Came Like Drums, Beating In The Night. The Rockets Came Like Locusts, Swarming And Settling In Blooms Of Rosy Smoke.

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.

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.

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

Are You Happy?" She [clarisse] Said. "am I What?" He [montag] Cried. But She Was Gone- Running In The Moonlight. Her Front Door Shut Gently.

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

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.

Creativity Is A Continual Surprise.

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

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.

I Don't Have A Computer. A Computer's A Typewriter. I Already Have A Typewriter.

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

Savory...that's A Swell Word. And Basil And Betel. Capsicum. Curry. All Great. But Relish, Now, Relish With A Capital R. No Argument, That' The Best.

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.

All You Umpires, Back To The Bleachers. Referees, Hit The Showers. It's My Game. I Pitch, I Hit, I Catch. I Run The Bases. At Sunset, I've Won Or Lost. At Sunrise, I'm Out Again, Giving It The Old Try.

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

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

The Merry-go-round Was Running, Yes, But... It Was Running Backward. The Small Calliope Inside The Carousel Machinery Rattle-snapped Its Nervous-stallion Shivering Drums, Clashed Its Harvest-moon Cymbals, Toothed Its Castanets, And Throatily Choked And Sobbed Its Reeds, Whistles, And Baroque Flutes.

The Greek Philosophies Teach Us That We Are A Combination Of Dark And Light, Good And Evil, And Murderer And Savior, Hmm? And Until We Know This Completely About Ourselves We Cannot Love Well, And We Cannot Forgive Ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

I Am A Librarian. I Discovered Me In The Library. I Went To Find Me In The Library. Before I Fell In Love With Libraries, I Was Just A Six-year-old Boy. The Library Fueled All Of My Curiosities, From Dinosaurs To Ancient Egypt. When I Graduated From High School In 1938, I Began Going To The Library Three Nights A Week. I Did This Every Week For Almost Ten Years And Finally, In 1947, Around The Time I Got Married, I Figured I Was Done. So I Graduated From The Library When I Was Twenty-seven. I Discovered That The Library Is The Real School.

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

Positive Thinking

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

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.

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.

My Passions Drive Me To The Typewriter Every Day Of My Life, And They Have Driven Me There Since I Was Twelve. So I Never Have To Worry About Schedules. Some New Thing Is Always Exploding In Me, And It Schedules Me, I Don’t Schedule It. It Says: Get To The Typewriter Right Now And Finish This.

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

I Don’t Write Things To Benefit The World. If It Happens That They Do, Swell. I Didn’t Set Out To Do That. I Set Out To Have A Hell Of A Lot Of Fun.

We Travel, Initially, To Lose Ourselves, And We Travel, Next, To Find Ourselves. We Travel To Open Our Hearts And Eyes. And We Travel, In Essence, To Become Young Fools Again—to Slow Time Down And Get Taken In, And Fall In Love Once More.

Falling In Love

I Love Writing, It's The Center Of My Life. If You Don't Love What You Do, You'd Better Find Something Else To Love. Otherwise, You Don't Have A Reason For Living.

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

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

Why All This Insistence On The Senses? Because In Order To Convince Your Reader That He Is There, You Must Assault Each Of His Senses, In Turn, With Color, Sound, Taste, And Texture. If Your Reader Feels The Sun On His Flesh, The Wind Fluttering His Shirt Sleeves, Half Your Fight Is Won. The Most Improbable Tales Can Be Made Believable, If Your Reader, Through His Senses, Feels Certain That He Stands At The Middle Of Events. He Cannot Refuse, Then, To Participate. The Logic Of Events Always Gives Way To The Logic Of The Senses.

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

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.

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!'

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

When A Man Talks From His Heart, In His Moment Of Truth, He Speaks Poetry.

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.

It Takes Writing A Billion Bad Words Before You Get To The Good Ones.

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.

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

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

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

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.

Forgive, I Hope You Won't Be Upset, But When I Was A Boy I Used To Look Up And See You Behind Your Desk, So Near But Far Away, And, How Can I Say This, I Used To Think That You Were Mrs. God, And That The Library Was A Whole World, And That No Matter What Part Of The World Or What People Or Thing I Wanted To See And Read, You'd Find And Give It To Me.

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.

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

A Computer Does Not Smell ... If A Book Is New, It Smells Great. If A Book Is Old, It Smells Even Better… And It Stays With You Forever. But The Computer Doesn’t Do That For You. I’m Sorry.

Garrett," Said Stendahl, "do You Know Why I've Done This To You? Because You Burned Mr. Poe's Books Without Really Reading Them. You Took Other People's Advice That They Needed Burning. Otherwise You'd Have Realized What I Was Going To Do To You When We Came Down Here A Moment Ago. Ignorance Is Fatal, Mr. Garrett.

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.

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.

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

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

Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

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.

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.

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

I 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.

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")

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

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

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.

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

I Want Your Loves To Be Multiple. I Don't Want You To Be A Snob About Anything. Anything You Love, You Do It.

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.

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

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.

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.

You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

Inspiration To Write

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

God, Here And There, Makes Madness A Calling.

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

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.

The Faster You Blurt, The More Swiftly You Write, The More Honest You Are.

Sometimes You Just Have To Jump Out The Window And Grow 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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

We Need Not To Be Let Alone. We Need To Be Really Bothered Once In A While. How Long Is It Since You Were Really Bothered? About Something Important, About Something Real?

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

Today We Haved Touched Mars. There Is Life On Mars, And It Us Us-extensions Of Our Eyes In All Directions, Extensions Of Our Mind, Extensions Of Our Heart And Soul Have Touched Mars Today. That's The Message To Look For There: We Are On Mars. We Are The Martians!

We Are The Miracle Of Force And Matter Making Itself Over Into Imagination And Will. Incredible. The Life Force Experimenting With Forms. You For One. Me For Another. The Universe Has Shouted Itself Alive. We Are One Of The Shouts.

Ideas Excite Me, And As Soon As I Get Excited, The Adrenaline Gets Going And The Next Thing I Know I'm Borrowing Energy From The Ideas Themselves.

Beware The Autumn People

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.

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

Better Off Dead

For If We're Destroyed, The Knowledge Is Dead...we're Nothing More Than Dust Jackets For Books...so Many Pages To A Person.

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

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.

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.

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 Books Are To Remind Us What Asses And Fools We Are.

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

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

Heaven Is A House With Porch Lights.

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.

Do What You Love And Love What You Do. Don’t Do Anything For Money. Everything Should Be For Love.

You've Been Put On The World To Love The Act Of Being Alive.

Every Time You Take A Step, Even When You Don't Want To. . . . When It Hurts, When It Means You Rub Chins With Death, Or Even If It Means Dying, That's Good. Anything That Moves Ahead, Wins. No Chess Game Was Ever Won By The Player Who Sat For A Lifetime Thinking Over His Next Move.

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

Ideas And Philosophies Change Just As Machines Do. Religions Changed Because Of The Birth Control Pill. Politics Changes Because Of The Hydrogen Bomb. All Because Of Science Fictional Inventions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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