I'll be damned if death wears my sadness for glad rags.
Interpretation
The quote conveys a defiance against allowing death to take over one's joy and emotions.
Ray Bradbury's quote expresses a strong refusal to be sad or to let grief overshadow happiness. It suggests that one should not allow death or the sadness associated with it to define their existence or affect their spirit, indicating a resilient and victorious attitude toward life and its inevitable challenges.
In practice
This quote can be used in a eulogy to celebrate a person's joyful spirit.
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 canβt imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You donβt 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.
Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul.
All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.
I remember, I remember The fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; It was a childish ignorance, But now 't is little joy To know I'm farther off from heaven Than when I was a boy.
I shall ask for the abolition for the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.
Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.
Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.
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