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

-Ray Bradbury

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...trees To Cool The

Ray Bradbury

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

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Those Who Don't Build Must Burn. It's As Old As History And Juvenile Delinquents.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Autumn Leaves Blew Over The Moonlit Pavement In Such A Way As To Make The Girl Who Was Moving There Seem Fixed To A Sliding Walk, Letting The Motion Of The Wind And The Leaves Carry Her Forward. [...] The Trees Overhead Made A Great Sound Of Letting Down Their Dry Rain.

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.

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

As A Result Of Reading Science Fiction When I Was Eight, I Grew Up With An Interest In Music, Architecture, City Planning, Transportation, Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics On Any Level, Art...it's Just Total! It's A Complete Commitment To The Whole Human Race On All The Earth. That's What Science Fiction Is About.

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?

Touch A Scientist And You Touch A Child.

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

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

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.

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

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

So In Sum, What Are We? We Are The Creatures That Know And Know Too Much. That Leaves Us With Such A Burden Again We Have A Choice, To Laugh Or Cry. No Other Animal Does Either. We Do, Depending On The Season And The Need.

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

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

I Believe In Darwin And God Together.

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

No," Said A Voice, "the Only Thing Wrong On A Night Like That Is That There Is A World And You Must Come Back To It.

Good To Evil Seems Evil

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.

A Library Is All The University You Will Ever Need.

I'm Inclined To Believe You Need The Psychiatrist.

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.

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

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.

A Day Without Writing Was A Little Death.

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!

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.

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

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

Too Many Of Us Have Lost The Passion And Emotion Of The Remarkable Things We-ve Done In Space. Let Us Not Tear Up The Future, But Rather Again Heed The Creative Metaphors That Render Space Travel A Religious Experience. When The Blast Of A Rocket Launch Slams You Against The Wall And All The Rust Is Shaken Off Your Body, You Will Hear The Great Shout Of The Universe And The Joyful Crying Of People Who Have Been Changed By What They-ve Seen.

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

Why Would You Clone People When You Can Go To Bed With Them And Make A Baby? C'mon, It's Stupid.

A Book Is A Loaded Gun.

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

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.

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

Marriage Made People Old And Familiar, While Still Young.

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

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

[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.

Sometimes You Have Intuitive Insight About How You Think Things Are Going To Be, And You Write That. Other Times You Fantasize Completely, Which Has Nothing To Do With Predicting The Future.

But Most Of All, I Like To Watch People. Sometimes I Ride The Subway All Day And Look At Them And Listen To Them. I Just Want To Figure Out Who They Are And What They Want And Where They Are Going. Sometimes I Even Go To Fun Parks And Ride In The Jet Cars When They Race On The Edge Of Town At Midnight And The Police Don't Care As Long As They're Insured. As Long As Everyone Has Ten Thousand Insurance Everyone's Happy. Sometimes I Sneak Around And Listen In Subways. Or I Listen At Soda Fountains, And Do You Know What? People Don't Talk About Anything.

We Meet On The Common Ground Of An Uncommon Age And Share Out Our Gifts Of Dark And Light, Good And Bad, Simple Joy And Not So Simple Sorrow.

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book.

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

Each Person Was Himself One Alone. One Oneness, A Unit In A Society, But Always Afraid, Always Alone. If I Should Scream, If I Should Call For Help, Would Anyone Hear Would It Even Matter?

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

I’m The Thing You Most Desire, You Represent The Thing I Least Desire, Death. It’s Just The Opposite Of Love.

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.

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.

I Discovered Very Early On That If You Wanted A Thing, You Went For It - And You Got It. Most People Never Go Anywhere, Or Want Anything - So They Never Get Anything.

Once The Automobile Appeared You Could Have Predicted That It Would Destroy As Many People As It Did.

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

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

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

When You Reach The Stars, Boy, Yes, And Live There Forever, All The Fears Will Go, And Death Himself Will Die.

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

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

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!

Don't Think. Thinking Is The Enemy Of Creativity. It's Self-conscious, And Anything Self-conscious Is Lousy. You Can't Try To Do Things. You Simply Must Do Things.

Thinking Of You

The World, Like A Great Iris Of An Even More Gigantic Eye, Which Has Also Just Opened And Stretched Out To Encompass Everything, Stared Back At Him.

No Person Ever Died That Had A Family.

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.

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

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

I Went To Bed And Woke In The Middle Of The Night Thinking I Heard Someone Cry, Thinking I Myself Was Weeping, And I Felt My Face And It Was Dry. Then I Looked At The Window And Thought: Why, Yes, It's Just The Rain, The Rain, Always The Rain, And Turned Over, Sadder Still, And Fumbled About For My Dripping Sleep And Tried To Slip It Back On.

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.

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

Writing Is Supposed To Be Difficult, Agonizing, A Dreadful Exercise, A Terrible Occupation.

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

I Want To Feel All There Is To Feel, He Thought. Let Me Feel Tired, Now, Let Me Feel Tired. I Mustn't Forget, I'm Alive, I Know I'm Alive, I Mustn't Forget It Tonight Or Tomorrow Or The Day After That.

The First Stories I Wrote When I Was 12 Were About Mars And Landing On Mars.

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

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.

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.

You Must Live Feverishly In A Library. Colleges Are Not Going To Do Any Good Unless You Are Raised And Live In A Library Everyday Of Your Life.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

You'll Be Found, Your Nickels, Dimes And Indian-heads Fused By Electroplating. Abe Lincolns Melted Into Miss Columbias, Eagles Plucked Raw On The Backs Of Quarters, All Run To Quicksilver In Your Jeans. More! Any Boy Hit By Lightning, Lift His Lid And There On His Eyeball, Pretty As The Lord's Prayer On A Pin, Find The Last Scene The Boy Ever Saw! A Box-brownie Photo, By God, Of That Fire Climbing Down The Sky To Blow You Like A Penny Whistle, Suck Your Soul Back Up Along The Bright Stair!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I Have Spent My Life Going From Mania To Mania. Somehow It Has All Paid Off.

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

Maybe The Books Can Get Us Half Out Of The Cave. They Just Might Stop Us From Making The Same Damm Insane Mistakes!

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.

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

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

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")

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

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!

... Bums On The Outside, Libraries Inside.

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.

The Beginning Of Wisdom, As They Say. When You're Seventeen You Know Everything. When You're Twenty-seven If You Still Know Everything You're Still Seventeen.

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

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

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.

Please, Please, Help Me Grow To Be Like Them, The Ones'll Soon Be Here, Who Never Grow Old, Can't Die, That's What They Say, Can't Die, No Matter What, Or Maybe They Died A Long Time Ago But Cecy Calls, And Mother And Father Call, And Grandmere Who Only Whispers, And Now They're Coming And I'm Nothing, Not Like Them Who Pass Through Walls And Live In Trees Or Live Underneath Until Seventeen-year Rains Flood Them Up And Out, And The Ones Who Run In Packs, Let Me Be The One! If They Live Forever, Why Not Me?

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

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

Why Is It," He Said, One Time, At The Subway Entrance, "i Feel I've Known You So Many Years?" "because I Like You," She Said, "and I Don't Want Anything From You.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Time Is So Strange And Life Is Twice As Strange.

Why Live? Life Was Its Own Answer. Life Was The Propagation Of More Life And The Living Of As Good A Life As Possible.

Martian Chronicles

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

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

I’m Really Alive! He Thought. I Never Knew It Before, Or If I Did I Don’t Remember!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Beware The Autumn People

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.

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

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

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

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

Mysteries Abound Where Most We Seek For Answers.

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.

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 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?

When Rivers Flooded, When Fire Fell From The Sky, What A Fine Place The Library Was, The Many Rooms, The Books. With Luck, No One Found You. How Could They!--when You Were Off To Tanganyika In '98, Cairo In 1812, Florence In 1492!?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Well, After All, This Is The Age Of The Disposable Tissue. Blow Your Nose On A Person, Wad Them, Flush Them Away, Reach For Another, Blow, Wad, Flush. Everyone Using Everyone Else's Coattails. How Are You Supposed To Root For The Home Team When You Don't Even Have A Program Or Know The Names? For That Matter, What Color Jersey's Are They Reading As They Trot Out To The Feild?

I 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.

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.

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

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.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

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.

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

People Want To Be Happy, Isn't That Right? Haven't You Heard It All Your Life? I Want To Be Happy, People Say. Well, Aren't They? Don't We Keep Them Moving, Don't We Give Them Fun? That's All We Live For, Isn't It? For Pleasure, For Titillation? And You Must Admit Our Culture Provides Plenty Of These.

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.

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

I 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.

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

Love Is Easy, And I Love Writing.

When Your Dawn Theater Sounds To Clear Your Sinuses: Don't Delay. Jump. Those Voices May Be Gone Before You Hit The Shower To Align Your Wits. Speed Is Everything. The 90-mph Dash To Your Machine Is A Sure Cure For Life Rampant And Death Most Real. Make Haste To Live. Oh, God, Yes. Live. And Write. With Great Haste.

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!'

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

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.

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

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

Learn To Let Go

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.

You Knew The Sweetness Of Now, Now, Tonight! Who Cares For Tomorrow, Tomorrow Is Nothing, Yesterday Is Over And Done, Tonight Live, Tonight!

I'll Be Darned!" Said Douglas. "i Never Thought Of That. That's Brilliant! It's True. Old People Never Were Children!" "and It's Kind Of Sad," Said Tom, Sitting Still."there's Nothing We Can Do To Help Them.

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

Thinking Of You

He Had Never Liked October. Ever Since He Had First Lay In The Autumn Leaves Before His Grandmother's House Many Years Ago And Heard The Wind And Saw The Empty Trees. It Had Made Him Cry, Without A Reason. And A Little Of That Sadness Returned Each Year To Him. It Always Went Away With Spring. But, It Was A Little Different Tonight. There Was A Feeling Of Autumn Coming To Last A Million Years. There Would Be No Spring. ("the October Game")

I Have Fun With Ideas; I Play With Them.

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

Acting Without Knowing Takes You Right Off The Cliff.

Action Is Hope. At The End Of Each Day, When You've Done Your Work, You Lie There And Think, Well, I'll Be Damned, I Did This Today. It Doesn't Matter How Good It Is, Or How Bad-you Did It. At The End Of The Week You'll Have A Certain Amount Of Accumulation. At The End Of A Year, You Look Back And Say, I'll Be Damned, It's Been A Good Year.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Terrible Tyranny Of The Majority.

Tyranny Of The Majority

A Stranger Is Shot In The Street, You Hardly Move To Help. But If, Half An Hour Before, You Spent Just Ten Minutes With The Fellow And Knew A Little About Him And His Family, You Might Just Jump In Front Of His Killer And Try To Stop It. Really Knowing Is Good. Not Knowing, Or Refusing To Know Is Bad, Or Amoral, At Least. You Can’t Act If You Don’t Know.

Let The World Burn Through You. Throw The Prism Light, White Hot, On Paper.

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George Leigh Mallory

Charles Alexander Eastman

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