I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the concept of shadows and night, suggesting that our understanding of darkness is tied to the multitude of trees and their shadows.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury creatively explores the interplay between light and darkness, using shadows as a metaphor for the complexities and uncertainties in life. He humorously suggests that if we could somehow contain the shadows created by the vast number of trees, we could eliminate night itself. This imaginative thought prompts deeper reflection on how shadows, representing fears or challenges, affect our perception of reality and our ability to experience life fully.
In practice
During a speech about overcoming obstacles, one might reference this quote to illustrate how we perceive challenges differently.
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.
Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as a legislature, Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters, And where it is least desired, it loiters.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
The choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason; as if man could give reason to himself.
Worship is as natural to the human family as the sing of the sun is to the cosmic order.
There is nothing on earth that I would not give up, excepting of course, two things and two things only, truth and nonviolence.
We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.
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