Ray Bradbury Quotes

“I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”
― Juan Ramón Jiménez, Invisible Reality

“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, Fahrenheit 451

“Sunsets are loved because they vanish.

Flowers are loved because they go.

The dogs of the field and the cats of the kitchen are loved because soon they must depart.

These are not the sole reasons, but at the heart of morning welcomes and afternoon laughters is the promise of farewell. In the gray muzzle of an old dog we see goodbye. In the tired face of an old friend we read long journeys beyond returns.”
― Ray Bradbury, From the Dust Returned

“Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Without the library, you have no civilization.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!”
― Ray Bradbury

“And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales'. And even this is objectionable, since many science fiction stories take place in the present or the past, far and near.”
― Philip José Farmer

“You can't ever have my books.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“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.”
― Ray Bradbury

“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.”
― Ray Bradbury

“The thing that makes me happy is that I know that on Mars, two hundred years from now, my books are going to be read. They’ll be up on dead Mars with no atmosphere. And late at night, with a flashlight, some little boy is going to peek under the covers and read The Martian Chronicles on Mars.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

“Pasamos la vida entera aprendiendo a olvidar cosas que en realidad están dentro”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Where's your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You've been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now!”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“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 headed for shore.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Everybody else going through the terror and joy of their first crushes, their first dates, their first kisses while Oscar sat in the back of the class, behind his DM's screen, and watched his adolescence stream by. Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“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.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“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.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We theorize about what goes on in the brain, but it is mostly undiscovered country. A writer's work is to coax the stuff out and see how it plays. Surprise, as I have often said, is everything.”
― Ray Bradbury

“It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know I'm drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can't breathe.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“He shaped the world.
He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“They lay blinking their dusty eyelids.

...Montag sat up.

He did not move any further, however. The other men did likewise. The sun was touching the black horizon with a faint red tip.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“...but we've got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember every generation.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Well, this fire'll last me the rest of my life. God! I've been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night. I'm crazy with trying.”
― RAY BRADBURRY, Fahrenheit 451

“Words and thoughts not shared die with the author for all eternity.”
― David Lasaine

“He came out of the earth, hating. Hate was his father; hate was his mother.”
― Ray Bradbury, Pillar of Fire