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It was a pleasure to burn.
“You think too many things,”
Someone else just jumped off the cap of a pillbox.
Easier to go along with her apparently willful sensory isolation than to fight her out of it.
All right if you say so,
I sure do!’ Isn’t that fun, Guy?
Even with scripts and full-space immersion, the interaction is still shallow. It's pure scripted agreement with the other characters, no critical thought necessary.
They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies.
It was suddenly more important than any other thing in a lifetime that he know where he had met Mildred. “It doesn’t matter.”
Very clever juxtaposition
We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while.
Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.
He squinted at the wall. “ ‘That favorite subject, Myself.’ ” “I understand that one,” said Mildred.
electronic sun.
Maybe I've missed it, but so far everything but the characters themselves is dead or fake or artificial. The Montags, Clarisse, the Firemen, and the lady in the house are the only living things in the book so far besides insects. The Hounds are facsimiles of real dogs, and the indoor electronic sun is a replication of the real one. Just an interesting observation.
And the colors!
“Jesus God,” said Montag. “Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumors about hate, too, once
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He ran on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, because he wanted to feel his feet move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air.
I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper absolutely needs.
I just want someone to hear what I have to say.
Denham’s Dentifrice; they toil not, neither do they spin,
Neat backreference, he ultimately did misremember the little bit that he made a genuine attempt to retain.
“That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.”
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 headed for shore.
Why waste your final hours racing about your cage denying you’re a squirrel?
“When do you suppose the war will start?” he said. “I notice your husbands aren’t here tonight.” “Oh, they come and go, come and go,” said Mrs. Phelps. “In again out again Finnegan, the Army called Pete yesterday. He’ll be back next week. The Army said so. Quick war. Forty-eight hours they said, and everyone home. That’s what the Army said. Quick war. Pete was called yesterday and they said he’d be back next week. Quick. . . .” The three women fidgeted and looked nervously at the empty mud-colored walls. “I’m not worried,” said Mrs. Phelps. “I’ll let Pete do all the worrying.” She giggled.
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I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it’s not bad at all. You heave them into the ‘parlor’ and turn the switch. It’s like washing clothes; stuff laundry in and slam the lid.” Mrs. Bowles tittered. “They’d just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back!
Montag felt his right foot, then his left foot, move.
The irony that he traded one continuous controlling voice in his ear for another isn't lost on me.
“Well,” said Beatty, “the crisis is past and all is well, the sheep returns to the fold. We’re all sheep who have strayed at times. Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning, we’ve cried. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts, we’ve shouted to ourselves. ‘Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge,’ Sir Philip Sidney said. But on the other hand: ‘Words are like leaves and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.’ Alexander Pope. What do you think of that, Montag?”
Beatty abohrs books and the knowledge therein, but nevertheless doesn't refrain from using them to make himself seem intellectually superior. Is the irony lost on him, or is he playing for some higher endgame? Beatty is obviously a smart guy, but does he himself realize it, and to what end?
The other men helped, and Montag helped, and there, in the wilderness, the men all moved their hands, putting out the fire together.
We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And some day we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddam steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up.
