Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)

by Ray Bradbury

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot.

And, after all, isn’t that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people’s heads to look out at the damned fool miracle and say: oh, so that’s how you see it!? Well, now, I must remember that.

“I’ve always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge.

“We don’t seem to have much time now.” “No, but perhaps there will be another time. Time is so strange and life is twice as strange. The cogs miss, the wheels turn, and lives interlace too early or too late. I lived too long, that much is certain. And you were born either too early or too late. It was a terrible bit of timing. But perhaps I am being punished for being a silly girl. Anyway, the next spin around, wheels might function right again.

“All I know is I feel good going to bed nights, Doug. That’s a happy ending once a day. Next morning I’m up and maybe things go bad. But all I got to do is remember that I’m going to bed that night and just lying there a while makes everything okay.”

And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it’s like it’s morning again and I’m starting the day over.”