The collection / 411 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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411 results · Page 9 of 18Play this collection ▷

01c. 1966 AD

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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02c. 1966 AD

Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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03c. 1966 AD

Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There's nothing magical in them at all. Magic is only what books mean, what books say. How they stitch the patterns of the universe together into one garment for us.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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04c. 1966 AD

There must be something in books, things we can't imagine.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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05c. 1966 AD

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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06c. 1966 AD

See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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07c. 1966 AD

Summer quiet thoughts on summer quiet noons.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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08c. 1966 AD

You could see her thoughts swimming around in her eyes, like fish - some bright, some dark, some fast, quick, some slow and easy, and sometimes, like when she looked up where Earth was, being nothing but colour and nothing else.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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09c. 1966 AD

The crisis is past and all is well, the sheep returns to the fold. We're all sheep who have strayed at times. Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning, we've cried. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts, we've shouted to ourselves.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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10c. 1966 AD

I talk. Jim runs. I tilt stones, Jim grabs the cold junk under the stones and -lickety-split! I climb hills. Jim yells off church steeples. I got a bank account. Jim’s got the hair on his head, the yell in his mouth, the shirt on his back and the tennis shoes on his feet. How come I think he’s richer?

Ray Bradbury / quote

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11c. 1966 AD

A woman's voice answered, "Hello?"Walter cried back at her, "Hello, oh Lord, hello!""This is a recording," recited the woman's voice. "Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the wire spool so she may call you when she returns? Hello? This is a recording. Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message -"He hung up.He sat with his mouth twitching.On second thought he redialed that number."When Miss Helen Arasumian comes home," he said, "tell her to go to hell.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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12c. 1966 AD

Do you know why books such as this are so important? They have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass screaming past an infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper the more literary you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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13c. 1966 AD

No, no, it's not the books you are looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, in old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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14c. 1966 AD

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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15c. 1966 AD

I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer.Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview(Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)

Ray Bradbury / quote

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16c. 1966 AD

I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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17c. 1966 AD

Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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18c. 1966 AD

Poverty made a sound like a wet cough in the shadows of the room.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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19c. 1966 AD

Or maybe he means in a richer world the begging population is melting away. But no to that too. So maybe, perhaps, he means there aren't many 'human beings' left to look, see, and understand well enough for one to ask and one to give. Everyone busy, running, jumping, there's no time to study one another. But I guess that's bilge and hogwash, slop and sentiment.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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20c. 1966 AD

Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?Do they even know I'm HERE?

Ray Bradbury / quote

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21c. 1966 AD

I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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22c. 1966 AD

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, reading your story, will catch fire, too?

Ray Bradbury / quote

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23c. 1966 AD

Business or profession?''I guess you'd call me a writer.'No profession,' said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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24c. 1966 AD

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.

Ray Bradbury / quote

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