Explore Quotes by Ray Bradbury

Kerosene," he said, because the silence had lengthened, "is nothing but perfume to me.

Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.

Are you happy?" she [Clarisse] said. "Am I what?" he [Montag] cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently.

You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You're one of the few who put up with me. That's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman, it just doesn't seem right for you, somehow.

"That's sad," said Montag, quietly, "because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know."

The Internet is a big distraction. It's distracting, it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.

I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

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.

Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.

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.

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.

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.

Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.

Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.

The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

Don't they get afraid, then?" "They have a religion for that.

In order for a thing to be horrible it has to suffer a change you can recognize.

Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.

And the odd think in Dad's voice was the sound truth makes being said.

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.

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.