A Pleasure to Burn Quotes

“Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“Let me alone," said Mildred
"Let you alone!" He almost cried out with laughter. "Letting you alone is easy, but how can I leave myself alone? That's what's wrong. We need not to be let alone. We need to be upset and stirred and bothered, once in a while, anyway. Nobody bothers anymore. Nobody thinks. Let a baby alone, why don't you? What would you have in twenty years? A savage, unable to think or talk--like us!”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“You should've thought of that before becoming a fireman."

"Thought!" he said. "Was I given a choice? I was raised to think the best thing in the world is not to read. The best thing is television and radio and ball games and a home I can't afford and, Good Lord, now, only now I realize what I've done. My grandfather and father were firemen. Walking in my sleep I followed them.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“You knew the sweetness of now, now, TONIGHT! who cares for tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, yesterday is over and done, tonight live, tonight!”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“Once you kill all of us, and you're alone, you'll die! The hate will die. That hate is what moves you, nothing else! That envy moves you. Nothing else! You'll die, inevitably. You're not immortal. You're not even alive, you're nothing but moving hate.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“Death loves death, not life. Dying people love to know that others die with them; it is a comfort to learn you are not alone in the kiln, in the grave.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“My men are my references. They're waiting outside for the books. They're dangerous."
"Men like that always are.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“Whatever she is now she's better than she was," said Bedloe. "Being dead is better than being dull, being dead is better than not being aware.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“Looking at her in the hospital he had thought, I don't know you, who you are, does it matter if we live or die?”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“It is a subliminal thing. It is the tick of a clock that has ticked so long one no longer notices. Something is in a room when a man lives in it. Something is not in the room when a man is dead in it.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“And there is only one way you can live, now. There must be an emotional hand to slap you on the back to make you move. A desire, a want, an emotion. Then the first thing you know you quiver and rise and strike your brow against silk-skinned wood. That emotion surges through you, calling you. If it is not strong enough, you will settle down wearily, and will not wake again. But if you grow with it, somehow, if you claw upward, if you work tediously, slowly, many days, you find ways of displacing earth an inch at a time, and one night you crumble the darkness, the exit is completed, and you wriggle forth to see the stars.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“You ever seen a burned house? It smolders for days. Well, this fire'll last me the rest of my life.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“He knew that when she pulled her hand away from his face it was wet.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“He lay far across the room from her, on a winter island separated by an empty sea.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451

“And there is only one way you can live, now. There must be an emotional hand to slap oyou on the back to make you move. A desire, a want, an emotion. Then the first thing you know you quiver and rise and strike your brow against silk-skinned wood. That emotion surges thorugh you, calling you. If it is not strong enough, you will settle down wearily, and will not wake again. But if you grow with it, somehow, if you claw upward, if you work tediously, slowly, many days, you find ways of displacing earth an inch at a time, and one night you crumble the darkness, the exit is completed, and you wriggle forth to see the stars.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Chilling Dystopian Fiction Exploring Censorship and the Origins of Fahrenheit 451