Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2)

by Ray Bradbury

God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.

The boy I once was, thought Halloway, who runs like the leaves down the sidewalk autumn nights.

The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.

“I’m never going to own anything can hurt me.” “You going to collect rocks, Jim? No, some day, you’ve got to be hurt.”

“Why do boys want their windows open wide?” “Warm blood.” “Warm blood.” She stood alone. “That’s the story of all our sorrows. And don’t ask why.”

So now Jim was the kite, the wild twine cut, and whatever wisdom was his taking him away from Will who could only run, earthbound, after one so high and dark silent and suddenly strange.

We men turn terribly mean, because we can’t hold to the world or ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.

“To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man’s a hero to himself. I’ve lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself—” “And, adding it all up . . .?” “The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I’m all right.”

Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?” “Since always.” “Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light.

For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two.

The blows of his heart might jar him loose, crash him down, but he was glad to hear them, know himself alive.

Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.