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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.

-Ray Bradbury

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We're Going To Become

Ray Bradbury

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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.

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People Try To Force Things. It's Disastrous. Just Leave Your Mind Alone. Your Intuition Knows What It Wants To Write, So Get Out Of The Way.

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

I 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

How Long Has It Been Since You Wrote A Story Where Your Real Love Or Your Real Hatred Somehow Got Onto The Paper? When Was The Last Time You Dared Release A Cherished Prejudice So It Slammed The Page Like A Lightning Bolt?

Venice Was And Is Full Of Lost Places Where People Put Up For Sale The Last Worn Bits Of Their Souls, Hoping No One Will Buy.

My Stories Are Warnings; They're Not Predictions. If They Were Predictions, I Wouldn't Do Them. Because Then I'd Be Part Of The Doom-ridden Psychology. But Every Time I Name A Problem, I Try To Give A Solution.

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

We Should Have Stayed On The Moon. We Should Have Made Moon The Base, Instead Of Building Space Stations, Which Are Fragile And Which Fly Apart.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

I'm Being Ironic. Don't Interrupt A Man In The Midst Of Being Ironic, It's Not Polite. There!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I Was Doing A Terrible Thing In Using The Very Books You Clung To, To Rebut You On Every Hand, On Every Point! What Traitors Books Can Be! You Think They're Backing You Up, And Then They Turn On You. Others Can Use Them, Too, And There You Are, Lost In The Middle Of The Moor, In A Great Welter Of Nouns And Verbs And Adjectives.

Our Civilization Is Flinging Itself To Pieces. Stand Back From The Centrifuge.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

We've Let Too Much Time Go By. We've Been Busy With War Instead Of Being Busy With Peace. And That's What Space Travel Is All About. It's All About Peace And Exploration And Wonder And Beauty.

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.

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

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

Sandwich Outdoors Isn’t A Sandwich Anymore. Tastes Different Than Indoors, Notice? Got More Spice. Tastes Like Mint And Pinesap. Does Wonders For The Appetite.

And Suddenly Everything, Absolutely Everything, Was There.

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

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.

It Was A Pleasure To Burn.

Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.

The Problem In Our Country Isn't With Books Being Banned, But With People No Longer Reading. Look At The Magazines, The Newspapers Around Us - It's All Junk, All Trash, Tidbits Of News. The Average Tv Ad Has 120 Images A Minute. Everything Just Falls Off Your Mind. You Don't Have To Burn Books To Destroy A Culture. Just Get People To Stop Reading Them.

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

They Walked Still Farther And The Girl Said, "is It True That Long Ago Firemen Put Fires Out Instead Of Going To Start Them?" No. Houses Have Always Been Fireproof, Take My Word For It." Strange. I Heard Once That A Long Time Ago Houses Used To Burn By Accident And They Needed Firemen To Stop The Flames.

Life Shoould Be Touched, Not Strangled. You've Got To Relax, Let It Happen At Times, And At Other Move Forward With It.

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.

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?

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I Wish You A Wrestling Match With Your Creative Muse That Will Last A Lifetime. ... I Wish Craziness And Foolishness And Madness Upon You. May You Live With Hysteria, And Out Of It Make Fine Stories - Science Fiction Or Otherwise. Which Finally Means, May You Be In Love Every Day For The Next 20,000 Days. And Out Of That Love, Remake A World.

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.

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

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.

Every Day Is Christmas Day To A Dog.

You Will Have To Write And Put Away Or Burn A Lot Of Material Before You Are Comfortable In This Medium. You Might As Well Start Now And Get The Work Done. For I Believe That Eventually Quantity Will Make For Quality.

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.

These Are All Novels, All About People That Never Existed, The People That Read Them It Makes Them Unhappy With Their Own Lives. Makes Them Want To Live In Other Ways They Can Never Really Be.

But We Do Need A Breather. We Do Need Knowledge. And Perhaps In A Thousand Years We Might Pick Smaller Cliffs To Jump Off. The Books Are To Remind Us What Asses And Fools We Are. They’re Caesar’s Praetorian Guard, Whispering As The Parade Roars Down The Avenue, ‘remember, Caesar, Thou Art Mortal.’ Most Of Us Can’t Rush Around, Talk To Everyone, Know All The Cities Of The World, We Haven’t Time, Money Or That Many Friends. The Things You’re Looking For, Montag, Are In The World, But The Only Way The Average Chap Will Ever See Ninety-nine Per Cent Of Them Is In A Book.

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

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!'

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

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

I’m Alive. Thinking About It, Noticing It, Is New. You Do Things And Don’t Watch. Then All Of A Sudden You Look And See What You’re Doing And It’s The First Time, Really.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

They Crashed The Front Door And Grabbed At A Woman, Though She Was Not Running, She Was Not Trying To Escape. She Was Only Standing, Weaving From Side To Side, Her Eyes Fixed Upon A Nothingness In The Wall As If They Had Struck Her A Terrible Blow Upon The Head. Her Tongue Was Moving In Her Mouth, And Her Eyes Seemed To Be Trying To Remember Something, And Then They Remembered And Her Tongue Moved Again: "play The Man, Master Ridley; We Shall This Day Light Such A Candle, By God's Grace, In England, As I Trust Shall Never Be Put Out.

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

Far Away, In The Meadow, Shadows Flickered In The Mirror's Maze, As If Parts Of Someone's Life, Yet Unborn, Were Trapped There, Waiting To Be Lived.

I Don't Know Anything Anymore

A Library Is All The University You Will Ever Need.

Orwell Was Dealing With Communism And His Disillusionment With Communism In Russia And What He Saw The Communists Do In Spain. His Novel Was A Response To Those Political Situations. Whereas I Was Interested In More Things Than The Political Atmosphere. I Was Considering The Whole Social Atmosphere: The Impact Of Tv And Radio And The Lack Of Education. I Could See The Coming Event Of Schoolteachers Not Teaching Reading Anymore. The Less They Taught, The More You Wouldn't Need Books.

In That Film Love Story, There's A Line, "love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry." That's The Dumbest Thing I Ever Heard. Love Means Saying You're Sorry Every Day For Some Little Thing Or Other.

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

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

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

Since Everything Is But An Apparition, Having Nothing To Do With Good Or Bad, Acceptance Or Rejection, One May Well Burst Out In Laughter. Longchenpa Let's Stuff Our Eyes With Wonder, Let's Live As If We'd Drop Dead In Ten Seconds. Let's See The World. It's More Fantastic Than Any Dream Made Or Paid For In Factories.

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

I'm Seventeen And I'm Crazy. My Uncle Says The Two Always Go Together. When People Ask Your Age, He Said, Always Say Seventeen And Insane.

With School Turning Out More Runners, Jumpers, Racers, Tinkerers, Grabbers, Snatchers, Fliers, And Swimmers Instead Of Examiners, Critics, Knowers, And Imaginative Creators, The Word 'intellectual,' Of Course, Became The Swear Word It Deserved To Be.

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

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

Life Is Like Underwear, Should Be Changed Twice A Day.

I'm Scared Of Myself. I Think I'd Be A Bad Driver. I'm Scared Of Cars, Period. I've Had Too Many Friends Killed Now, And I've Seen Too Many People Killed In My Life When I Drove Across The Country When I Was 12. I'm Sure That Has A Lot To Do With It. If You See A Few Real Dead Bodies With Brains On The Pavement, It Does A Lot To Change Your Attitude. It Means You Can Get It Too. I've Had A Lot Of Relatives Killed. I've Had A Lot Of Dear Friends Killed. It's Stupid. The Whole Activity Is Stupid.

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.

All Education Is Self-discovery.

I’ve Often Been Accused Of Being Too Emotional And Sentimental, But I Believe In Honest Sentiment, And The Need To Purge Ourselves At Certain Times, Which Is Ancient. Men Would Live At Least Five Or Six More Years And Not Have Ulcers If They Could Cry Better.

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

Thinking Of You

Living At Risk Is Jumping Off The Cliff And Building Your Wings On The Way Down.

They Stood There, King Of The Hill, Top Of The Heap, Ruler Of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs And Presidents, Trying To Understand What It Meant To Own A World And How Big A World Really Was.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

I Do A First Draft As Passionately And As Quickly As I Can. I Believe A Story Is Valid Only When It's Immediate And Passionate, When It Dances Out Of Your Subconscious. If You Interfere In Any Way, You Destroy It.

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.

Men Are Nuts. Young Men Are Crazy. We All Love Toys. I'm Toy Oriented. I Write About Toys. I've Got A Lot Of Toys. Hundreds Of Things. But Computers Are Toys, And Men Like To Mess Around With Smart Dumb Things. They Feel Creative.

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.

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.

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

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

Marriage Made People Old And Familiar, While Still Young.

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.

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

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.

It Could Reach Up And Grab The Moon.

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!

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

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.

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.

Comic Strips Introduced Me To Metaphors. They Are Pure Metaphor, So You Learn How To Tell A Story With Symbols, Which Is A Very Valuable Thing To Learn. And I Learned That From Motion Pictures, Too, And From Poetry. Poetry Is Mainly Metaphor. If It Doesn't Have A Metaphor, It Doesn't Work.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Falling In Love

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

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

The Television Is 'real'. It Is Immediate, It Has Dimension. It Tells You What To Think And Blasts It In. It Must Be Right. It Seems So Right. It Rushes You On So Quickly To Its Own Conclusions Your Mind Hasn't Time To Protest, 'what Nonsense!'.

The 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I Shall Remain On Mars And Read A Book.

I Believe In Creative Failing - To Contine To Write Poems That Fail And Fail And Fail Until A Day Comes When You've Got A Thousand Poems Behind You And You're Relaxed And You Finally Write A Good Poem.

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

I Have Something To Fight For And Live For; That Makes Me A Better Killer. I've Got What Amounts To A Religion Now. It's Learning How To Breathe All Over Again. And How To Lie In The Sun Getting A Tan, Letting The Sun Work Into You. And How To Hear Music And How To Read A Book. What Does Your Civilization Offer?

Thus Through Half-belief, We Are Often Doomed To Repeat That Very Past We Should Have Learned From.

Disbelief Is Catching. It Rubs Off On People.

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.

And The Lesson Was This; Sit In The Sun, Head Down, Within A Prickly Vine, In A Flickery Light, Or Open Light, And The World Will Come To You. The Sky Will Come In Its Time, Bringing Rain, And The Earth Will Rise Through You, From Beneath, And Make You Rich And Make You Full.

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

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.

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

Bees Do Have A Smell, You Know, And If They Don't They Should, For Their Feet Are Dusted With Spices From A Million Flowers.

My Parents Read The Comics To Me, And I Fell In Love With Comic Strips. I've Collected Them All Of My Life. I Have A Complete Collection Of All The "buck Rogers" Sunday Funnies And Daily Paper Strips, I Have All Of "prince Valiant" Put Away, All Of "tarzan," Which Appeared In The Sunday Funnies In 1932 Right On Up Through High School. So I've Learned A Lot From Reading Comics As A Child.

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

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.

We Travel For Romance, We Travel For Architecture, And We Travel To Be Lost.

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

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

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

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

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

"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?"

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

Rules To Live By

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.

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.

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

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.

You Don't Read In Your Own Field. You Read In That Field When You're Young, So That You Can Learn.

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

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

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

So While Our Art Cannot, As We Wish It Could, Save Us From Wars, Privation, Envy, Greed, Old Age, Or Death, It Can Revitalize Us Amidst It All.

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

He Lay Far Across The Room From Her, On A Winter Island Separated By An Empty Sea. She Talked To Him For What Seemed A Long While And She Talked About This And She Talked About That And It Was Only Words, Like The Words He Had Heard Once In A Nursery At A Friend's House, A Two-year-old Child Building Word Patters, Like Jargon, Making Pretty Sounds In The Air.

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.

All Of The Good, Weird Stories I’ve Written Are Based On Things I’ve Dredged Out Of My Subconscious. That’s The Real Stuff. Everything Else Is Fake.

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

Can't You Recognize The Human In The Inhuman?

Martian Chronicles

It's Poor Judgment', Said Grandpa 'to Call Anything By A Name. We Don't Know What A Hobgoblin Or A Vampire Or A Troll Is. Could Be Lots Of Things. You Can't Heave Them Into Categories With Labels And Say They'll Act One Way Or Another. That'd Be Silly. They're People. People Who Do Things. Yes, That's The Way To Put It. People Who *do* Things.

First Grade Is Very Cheap. It's The Later Grades Where You Have To Spend A Lot Of Money If You Don't Do It Right.

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.

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

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

What Church Could Compete With The Fireworks Of The Pure Soul?

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.

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.

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

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