Nessa Wesley’s Reviews > Fahrenheit 451 > Status Update

But now there was a long morning's walk until noon, and if the men were silent it was because there was everything to think about and much to remember.

‘It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts and the gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.’

‘Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said (…) Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.’

‘He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. (…) He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.’

‘We’ll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last.’

‘All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need, intact and safe. We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good.

'How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can't breathe.'

They would have killed me, thought Montag, swaying, the air still torn and stirring about him in dust, touching his bruised cheek. For no reason at all in the world they would have killed me.

You must remember, burn them or they'll burn you, he thought. Right now it's as simple as that.

How strange, strange, to want to die so much that you let a man walk around armed and then instead of shutting up and staying alive, you go on yelling at people and making fun of them until you get them mad, and then...