“The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men.”
Ray Bradbury“We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.” – The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950)”
Ray Bradbury“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. They may like Henry James, but what if you don't want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who's the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they've taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can't understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don't have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.”
Ray Bradbury“There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.”
Ray Bradbury“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“Her eyes reversed into herself, to watch the secret heart of herself pounding itself into pieces against the side of her chest.”
Ray Bradbury, The October Country“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.”
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine“We lived longer but at a price. We had to be our own children, having none.”
Ray Bradbury, Now and Forever“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.”
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine“Any conversation including the mention of Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, or Emily Dickinson is one worth getting into or at least eavesdropping.”
Don Roff