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.
Interpretation
Books uncover uncomfortable truths about life that some prefer to ignore.
This quote by Ray Bradbury suggests that books expose the raw, unfiltered aspects of life, which can make people uncomfortable. Those who favor superficiality may reject literature because it forces them to confront the complexities, flaws, and realities of existence, much like revealing the flaws on a human face as opposed to presenting only an idealized version.
In practice
During a literary discussion on the impact of literature in society.
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!)
I never went to college, so I went to the library.
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 think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.
The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.
Imagination is a danger thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination to keep on conjouring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.
Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.
The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.
There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
We are a profoundly interconnected species, as the global economic and ecological crises reveal in vivid and frightening detail. We must embrace the simple fact that we are dependent on and accountable to one another.
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