Bradbury Stories Quotes

“What are we?” he asked. “Why, we are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts. Creation turns in its abyss. We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes. The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force, truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths, fumbles to reach across Time to feel its own flesh and know it to be ours. We touch both ways and find each other miraculous because we are One.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The Martians discovered the secret of life among animals. The animal does not question life. It lives. Its very reason for living is life; it enjoys and relishes life.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The library was like a stone quarry where no rain had fallen in ten thousand years. Way off in that direction: silence. Way off in that direction: hush. It was the time between things finished and things begun. Nobody died here. Nobody was born. The library, and all its books, just were. We”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Mr. Shaw fixed his eyes on a star some twenty light-years away. “What are we?” he asked. “Why, we are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts. Creation turns in its abyss. We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes. The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force, truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths, fumbles to reach across Time to feel its own flesh and know it to be ours. We touch both ways and find each other miraculous because we are One.” Mr. Shaw turned to glance at his young friend.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The hot blue-glass eyes of the mannequins watched as the ladies drifted down the empty river bottom street, their images shimmering in the windows like blossoms seen under darkly moving waters.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Here we all are,” said Herb Thompson, taking his cigar out and looking at it reflectively. “And life is sure funny.” “Eh?” said Mr. Stoddard. “Nothing, except here we are, living our lives, and some place else on earth a billion other people live their lives.” “That’s a rather obvious statement.” “Life,” he put his cigar back in his lips, “is a lonely thing. Even with married people. Sometimes when you’re in a person’s arms you feel a million miles away from them.” “I like that,” said his wife. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he explained, not with haste; because he felt no guilt, he took his time. “I mean we all believe what we believe and live our own little lives while other people live entirely different ones. I mean, we sit here in this room while a thousand people are dying. Some of cancer, some of pneumonia, some of tuberculosis. I imagine someone in the United States is dying right now in a wrecked car.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“They quit trying too hard to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The man just opened his mouth, which meant that all kinds of secret doors in his body gave way. He did not sing so much as let his soul free.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Everyone thinks that. It’s one of those little secrets we keep from each other. Show me a serious man and I’ll show you a man who has never wept. Show me a madman and I’ll show you a man who dried his tears a long time ago. Go ahead.” “I”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Look at it this way, child, life is a magic show, or should be if people didn't go to sleep on each other. Always leave folks with a bit of mystery, son.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“I bet it’s the eleventh Commandment,” murmured the priest, eyes down. “What would the eleventh Commandment be?” asked Doone, scowling. “Why not: ‘THOU SHALT SHUT UP AND LISTEN’” said the priest. “Ssh.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you’re nine, you think you’ve always been nine years old and will always be. When you’re thirty, it seems you’ve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You’re in the present, you’re trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“You don’t ask a dream if it is real, or you wake up.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“They sat on the edge of a brook and took off their shoes and let the water cut their feet off to the ankles with an exquisite cold razor.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“we’re the start of an amazing, dumbfounding history of survival that will only get better as the centuries pass.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.
What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?
Do they even know I'm HERE?”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“There’s enough. It comes in the window and blows the curtains a little bit. Just enough to tell me.” “Look, why don’t you come and spend the night here?” said Herb Thompson looking around the lighted hall. “Oh, no. It’s too late for that. It might catch me on the way over. It’s a damned long distance. I wouldn’t dare, but thanks, anyway. It’s thirty miles, but thanks.” “Take a sleeping-tablet.” “I’ve been standing in the door for the past hour, Herb. I can see it building up in the west. There are some clouds there and I saw one of them kind of rip apart. There’s a wind coming, all right.” “Well, you just take a nice sleeping-tablet. And call me anytime you want to call. Later this evening if you want.” “Any time?” said the voice on the phone. “Sure.” “I’ll do that, but I wish you could come out. Yet I wouldn’t want you hurt. You’re my best friend and I wouldn’t want that. Maybe it’s best I face this thing alone. I’m sorry I bother you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Strange. Half my years afraid of life. The other half, afraid of death. Always some kind of afraid.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“I remember once, when I lived in the Capital for a month and bought the paper fresh each day, I went wild with love, anger, irritation, frustration; all of the passions boiled in me. I was young. I exploded at everything I saw. But then I saw what I was doing: I was believing what I read. Have you noticed? You believe a paper printed on the very day you buy it? This has happened but only an hour ago, you think! It must be true.' He shook his head. 'So I learned to stand back away and let the paper age and mellow. Back here, in Colonia, I saw the headlines diminish to nothing. The week-old paper—why, you can spit on it if you wish. It is like a woman you once loved, but you now see, a few days later, she is not quite what you thought. She has rather a plain face. She is no deeper than a cup of water.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“When you strip all the clothes away and the doodads, you have two human beings who were either happy or unhappy together, and we have no complaints.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“When you strip all the clothes away and the doodads, you have two human beings who were either happy or unhappy”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“This will be the one trip of your life. Keep your eyes wide.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the night of close-packed ice cream, of mosquito-lotioned wrists, the night of running children suddenly veered from their games and put away behind glass, behind wood, the popsicles in melting puddles of lime and strawberry where they fell when the children were scooped indoors.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“stone. I hate being clever, thought the captain, when you don’t really feel clever and don’t want to be clever. To sneak around and make plans and feel big about making them. I hate this feeling of thinking I’m doing right when I’m not really certain I am. Who are we, anyway? The majority? Is that the answer? The majority is always holy, is it not? Always, always; just never wrong for one little insignificant tiny moment, is it? Never ever wrong in ten million years? He thought: What is this majority and who are in it? And what do they think and how did they get that way and will they ever change and how the devil did I get caught in this rotten majority? I don’t feel comfortable. Is it claustrophobia, fear of crowds, or common sense? Can one man be right, while all the world thinks they are right? Let’s not think about it. Let’s crawl around and act exciting and pull the trigger. There, and there!”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Intuited novels are far more ‘true’ than all your scribbled data-fact reportage in the history of the world!”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“So the rest of the summer you could see the two little girls and Tom like wrens on a wire, on Mrs. Bentley’s front porch, waiting. And when the silvery chimes of the icicle man were heard, the front door opened, Mrs. Bentley floated out with her hand deep down the gullet of her silver-mouthed purse, and for half an hour you could see them there on the porch, the children and the old lady putting coldness into warmness, eating chocolate icicles, laughing. At last they were good friends. “How old are you, Mrs. Bentley?” “Seventy-two.” “How old were you fifty years ago?” “Seventy-two.” “You weren’t ever young, were you, and never wore ribbons or dresses like these?” “No.” “Have you got a first name?” “My name is Mrs. Bentley.” “And you’ve always lived in this one house?” “Always.” “And never were pretty?” “Never.” “Never in a million trillion years?” The two girls would bend toward the old lady, and wait in the pressed silence of four o’clock on a summer afternoon. “Never,” said Mrs. Bentley, “in a million trillion years.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The Toynbee Convector” was born because of my reaction to the bombardment of despair we so frequently find in our newspaper headlines and television reportage, and the feeling of imminent doom in a society that has triumphed over circumstances again and again, but fails to look back and realize where it has come from, and what it has achieved.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“And still, strangely, they were not past the carnecería. The vision of red horror was on their left as they paced steadily forward on the hot tile sidewalk. The things that hung from hooks looked like brutalities and sins, like bad consciences, evil dreams, like gored flags and slaughtered promises. The redness, oh, the hanging, evil-smelling wetness and redness, the hooked and hung-high carcasses, unfamiliar, unfamiliar.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“She had a face of snow, cut from that white cool marble that makes the finest Irish women; a long swan neck, a generous if quivering mouth, and eyes a soft and luminous green. So beautiful were those eyes, and her profile against the blown tree branches, that something in me turned, agonized, and died. I felt that killing wrench men feel when beauty passes and will not pass again. You want to cry out: Stay. I love you. But you do not speak. And the summer walks away in her flesh, never to return.”
― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales