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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!

-Ray Bradbury

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You'll Be Found, Your

Ray Bradbury

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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!

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

The Huge Round Lunar Clock Was A Gristmill. Shake Down All The Grains Of Time—the Big Grains Of Centuries, And The Small Grains Of Years, And The Tiny Grains Of Hours And Minutes—and The Clock Pulverized Them, Slid Time Silently Out In All Directions In A Fine Pollen, Carried By Cold Winds To Blanket The Town Like Dust, Everywhere. Spores From That Clock Lodged In Your Flesh To Wrinkle It, To Grow Bones To Monstrous Size, To Burst Feet From Shoes Like Turnips. Oh, How That Great Machine…dispensed Time In Blowing Weathers.

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.

Life Should Be Touched, Not Strangled.

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

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.

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

Marriage Made People Old And Familiar, While Still Young.

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

What Is The Subconscious To Every Other Man, In Its Creative Aspect Becomes, For Writers, The Muse.

We've Got To Reinvest In Space Travel. We Should Have Never Left The Moon.

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?

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

My Goal Is To Entertain Myself And Others.

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

If You Don't Want A Man Unhappy Politically, Don't Give Him Two Sides To A Question To Worry Him; Give Him One. Better Yet, Give Him None.

The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time.

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?

Facts Are Not Interesting To Me.

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.

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

Write What You Love And Love What You Write.

Doing What You Love

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

But No Man's A Hero To Himself. I've Lived With Me A Lifetime. I Know Everything Worth Knowing About Myself--" ~something Wicked This Way Comes

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.

Get The Big Truth First. If You Get The Big Truth, The Small Truths Will Accumulate Around It.

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

The First Thing You Learn In Life Is You're A Fool. The Last Thing You Learn In Life Is You're The Same Fool.

What's The Point Of Having A Library Full Of Books You've Already Read?

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.

Disbelief Is Catching. It Rubs Off On People.

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

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")

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

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

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

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.

Don’t Let People Interfere With You. Boot ’em Out, Turn Off The Phone, Hide Away, Get It Done. If You Carry A Short Story Over To The Next Day You May Overnight Intellectualize Something About It And Try To Make It Too Fancy, Try To Please Someone.

Anything You Dream Is Fiction, And Anything You Accomplish Is Science, The Whole History Of Mankind Is Nothing But Science Fiction.

You Take The Books, You Lie There In The Pools Of Light And You Drink Life. That Is How Intensely I Have Loved Libraries.

Kids Love Me Because I Write Stories That Tell Them About Their Capacity For Evil. I'm One Of The Few Writers Who Lets You Cleanse Yourself That Way.

Now Let's Take Up The Minorities In Our Civilisation, Shall We? Bigger The Population, The More Minorities. Don't Step On The Toes Of The Dog-lovers, The Cat-lovers, Doctors, Lawyers, Merchants, Chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, Second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, People From Oregon Or Mexico. The People In This Book, This Play, This Tv Serial Are Not Meant To Represent Any Actual Painters, Cartographers, Mechanics Anywhere. The Bigger Your Market, Montag, The Less You Handle Controversy, Remember That!

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.

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.

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

We Are An Impossibility In An Impossible Universe.

Time Is So Strange And Life Is Twice As Strange. You Must Promise Me Not To Live To Be Too Old, William. It If Is At All Convenient, Die Before You're Fifty. It My Take A Bit Of Doing. But I Advise This Is Simply Because There Is No Telling When Another Helen Loomis Might Be Born. It Would Be Dreadful, Wouldn't It, If You Lived On To Be Very Very Old And Some Afternoon In 1999 Walked Down Main Street And Saw Me Standing There, Aged Twenty-one, And The Whole Thing Out Of Balance Again?

We Earth Men Have A Talent For Ruining Big, Beautiful Things. The Only Reason We Didn't Set Up Hot-dog Stands In The Midst Of The Egyptian Temple Of Karnak Is Because It Was Out Of The Way And Served No Large Commercial Purpose.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

Good Writers Touch Life Often.

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

Trying Everything

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.

It Won't Work,' Mr. Bentley Continued, Sipping His Tea. 'no Matter How Hard You Try To Be What You Once Were, You Can Only Be What You Are Here And Now. Time Hypnotizes. When You're Nine, You Think You've Always Been Nine Years Old And Will Always Be. When You're Thirty, It Seems You've Always Been Balanced There On That Bright Rim Of Middle Life. And Then When You Turn Seventy, You Are Always And Forever Seventy. You're In The Present, You're Trapped In A Young Now Or An Old Now, But There Is No Other Now To Be Seen.

The 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.

Why Go To A Machine When You Could Go To A Human Being?

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 Only Good Writing Is Intuitive Writing. It Would Be A Big Bore If You Knew Where It Was Going. It Has To Be Exciting, Instantaneous And It Has To Be A Surprise. Then It All Comes Blurting Out And It’s Beautiful. I’ve Had A Sign By My Typewriter For 25 Years Now Which Reads, ‘don’t Think!’

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

Everything That Happens Before Death Is What Counts.

Insanity Is Relative. It Depends On Who Has Who Locked In What Cage.

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

I Don't Think The Robots Are Taking Over. I Think The Men Who Play With Toys Have Taken Over. And If We Don't Take The Toys Out Of Their Hands, We're Fools.

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 Wore His Happiness Like A Mask And The Girl Had Run Off Across The Lawn With The Mask And There Was No Way Of Going To Knock On Her Door And Ask For It Back.

If You Did Not Write Every Day, The Poisons Would Accumulate And You Would Begin To Die, Or Act Crazy Or Both-you Must Stay Drunk On Writing So Reality Cannot Destroy You.

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.

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.

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

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

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

You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

Inspiration To Write

With A Book Tucked In One Hand, And A Computer Shoved Under My Elbow, I Will March, Not Sidle, Shudder Or Quake, Into The Twenty-first Century.

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.

It Was Only The Other Night Everything Was Fine And The Next Thing I Know Im Drowning. How Many Times Can A Man Go Down And Still Be Alive? I Can't Breathe

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 Write Science Fiction. I've Only Done One Science Fiction Book And That's Fahrenheit 451, Based On Reality. Science Fiction Is A Depiction Of The Real. Fantasy Is A Depiction Of The Unreal.

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

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

I Wonder How Many Men, Hiding Their Youngness, Rise As I Do, Saturday Mornings, Filled With The Hope That Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam And Daffy Duck Will Be There Waiting As Our One True Always And Forever Salvation?

I've Been Writing Every Day Of My Life For 65 Years.

Writing Every Day

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

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

Sometimes You Just Have To Jump Out The Window And Grow Wings On The Way Down.

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

Out In The World Not Much Happened. But Here In The Special Night, A Land Bricked With Paper And Leather Anything Might Happen, Always Did.

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

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

You Don't Have To Worry About The Future, You Don't Worry About The Past - You Just Explode.

I Prefer To See Myself As The Janus, The Two-faced God Who Is Half Pollyanna And Half Cassandra, Warning Of The Future And Perhaps Living Too Much In The Past - A Combination Of Both.

From The Outer Edge Of His Life, Looking Back, There Was Only One Remorse, And That Was Only That He Wished To Go On Living.

I Don't Know Anything Anymore

I Used To Take My Short Stories To Girls' Homes And Read Them To Them. Can You Imagine The Reaction Reading A Short Story To A Girl Instead Of Pawing Her?

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.

I'm Trying To Teach People Of All Ages To, Number One: How To Criticize, How To Offer Creative Analysis On Top Of That, How To Try To Build Things In A New Direction And How To Compliment People When The Thing Gets Done.

Mother: Why, Just Lying There, Jim, You Run So Fast. I Never Saw Anyone Move So Much, Just Sleeping. Promise Me, Jim. Wherever You Go And Come Back, Bring Lots Of Kids. Let Them Run Wild. Let Me Spoil Them, Some Day. Jim: I'm Never Going To Own Anything That Can Hurt Me.

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

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

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

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

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.

What Can We Writers Learn From Lizards, Lift From Birds? In Quickness Is Truth. The Faster You Blurt, The More Swiftly You Write, The More Honest You Are. In Hesitation Is Thought. In Delay Comes The Effort For A Style, Instead Of Leaping Upon Truth Which Is The Only Style Worth Deadfalling Or Tiger-trapping.

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.

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

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?

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.

I've Always Known That The Quality Of Love Was The Mind, Even Though The Body Sometimes Refuses This Knowledge. The Body Lives For Itself. It Lives Only To Feed And Wait For The Night. It's Essentially Nocturnal. But What Of The Mind Which Is Born Of The Sun, William, And Must Spend Thousands Of Hours Of A Lifetime Awake And Aware? Can You Balance Off The Body, That Pitiful, Selfish Thing Of Night Against A Whole Lifetime Of Sun And Intellect? I Don't Know.

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

When I Started Writing Seriously, I Made The Major Discovery Of My Life - That I Am Right And Everybody Else Is Wrong If They Disagree With Me. What A Great Thing To Learn: Don't Listen To Anyone Else, And Always Go Your Own Way.

You Must Never Name The Goal. You Must Never Tell Us The Target You're Hitting For. You Must Automatically Go Toward It Without Ever Naming It.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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")

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

My Job Is To Help You Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

Half The Fun Of The Travel Is The Esthetic Of Lostness.

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.

His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

Poetry Expands The Senses And Keeps Them In Prime Condition. It Keeps You Aware Of Your Nose, Your Eye, Your Ear, Your Tongue, Your Hand.

Remember, With Writing, What You’re Looking For Is Just One Person To Come Up And Tell You, 'i Love You For What You Do.'

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

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

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

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?

Science And Religion Have To Go Hand In Hand With The Mystery, Because There's A Certain Point Beyond Which You Say, "there Are No Answers."

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.

Shut The Door, They're Coming Through The Window, Shut The Window, They're Coming Through The Door," Are The Words To An Old Song. They Fit My Lifestyle With Newly Arriving Butcher/censors Every Month. Only Six Weeks Ago, I Discovered That, Over The Years, Some Cubby-hole Editors At Ballantine Books, Fearful Of Contaminating The Young, Had, Bit By Bit, Censored Some 75 Separate Sections From The Novel. Students, Reading The Novel Which, After All, Deals With Censorship And Book-burning In The Future, Write To Tell Me Of This Exquisite Irony.

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

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

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

Space Travel Is Life-enhancing, And Anything That's Life-enhancing Is Worth Doing. It Makes You Want To Live Forever.

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.

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

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.

Ours Is A Culture And A Time Immensely Rich In Trash As It Is In Treasures.

Do You Understand Now Why Books Are Hated And Feared? Because They Reveal The Pores On The Face Of Life. The Comfortable People Want Only The Faces Of The Full Moon, Wax, Faces Without Pores, Hairless, Expressionless.

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!

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.

I Was Never Young. Whoever I Was Then Is Dead. That's More Of Your Quills. I Don't Want A Hide Full, Thanks. I Have Always Figured That You Die Each Day And And Each Day Is A Is A Box, You See, All Numbered And Neat; But Never Go Back And Lift The Lids, Because You Have Died A Couple Thousand Times In Your Life, And That's A Lot Of Corpses, Each Dead A Different Way, Each With A Worse Expression. Each Of Those Days Is A Different You, Somebody You Don't Know Or Understand Or Want To Understand.

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?

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.

You Have To Learn To Take Rejection Not As An Indication Of Personal Failing But As A Wrong Address.

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

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

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.

The Wind Outside Nested In Each Tree, Prowled The Sidewalks In Invisible Treads Like Unseen Cats. Tom Skelton Shivered. Anyone Could See That The Wind Was A Special Wind This Night, And The Darkness Took On A Special Feel Because It Was All Hallows' Eve. Everything Seemed Cut From Soft Black Velvet Or Gold Or Orange Velvet. Smoke Panted Up Out Of A Thousand Chimneys Like The Plumes Of Funeral Parades. From Kitchen Windows Drifted Two Pumpkin Smells: Gourds Being Cut, Pies Being Baked.

You Let The Story Cool Off And Then, Instead Of Rewriting It, You Relive It.

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.

Every Story I've Written Was Written Because I Had To Write It. Writing Stories Is Like Breathing For Me; It Is My Life.

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

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.

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.

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.

Why Love The Woman Who Is Your Wife? Her Nose Breathes In The Air Of A World That I Know; Therefore I Love That Nose. Her Ears Hear Music I Might Sing Half The Night Through; Therefore I Love Her Ears. Her Eyes Delight In Seasons Of The Land; And So I Love Those Eyes. Her Tongue Knows Quince, Peach, Chokeberry, Mint And Lime; I Love To Hear It Speaking. Because Her Flesh Knows Heat, Cold, Affliction, I Know Fire, Snow, And Pain. Shared And Once Again Shared Experience.

All Isn't Well With The World.

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

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

We Earth Men Have A Talent For Ruining Big, Beautiful Things.

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.

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.

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'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.

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

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

He Says I'm A Regular Onion! I Keep Him Busy Peeling Away The Layers.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

There's A Lot Of Crap Out There. Most Of The Science Fiction Films Alone Are Abominations, You Know. They're Mindless. So You Can't Learn From Those Kinds Of Films.

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

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.

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

It Was A Pleasure To Burn.

Just Write Every Day Of Your Life. Read Intensely. Then See What Happens. Most Of My Friends Who Are Put On That Diet Have Very Pleasant Careers.

Do What You Love, Don't Do Anything Else.

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Masanobu Fukuoka

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