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(no category)
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And now, these books. This. He touched PHYSIOGNOMONIE. The secrets of the individual's character as found on his face. Were Jim and Will, then, featured all angelic, pure, half-innocent, peering up through the sidewalk at marching terror? Did the boys represent the ideal for your Woman, Man, or Child of Excellent Bearing, Color, Balance, and Summer Disposition?
Converserly...Charles Halloway turned a page...did the scurrying freaks, the Illustrated Marvel, bear the foreheads of the Irascible, the Cruel, the Covetous, the mouths of the Lewd and Untruthful? the teeth of the Crafty, the Unstable, the Audacious, the Vainglorious, and your Marvelous Beast?
No. The book slipped shut. If faces were judged, the freaks were no worse than many he'd been slipping from the liberty late nights in his long career.
There was only one thing sure.
Two lines of Shakespeare said it. He should write them in the middle of the clock of books, to fix the heart of his apprehension:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
So vague yet so immense.
He did not want to live with it.
Yet he knew that, during this night, unless he lived with it very well, he might have to live with it for all the rest of his life.
At the window he looked out and thought Jim, Will, are you coming? will you get here?
Waiting, his flesh took paleness from his bones.
-Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes, ending of chapter 37, page 137-138 from Bantam Books thirteenth paperback printing November, 1972
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Adventure
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Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
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America
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Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it.
-Ray Bradbury
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Authors & Writing
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I love writing, it's the center of my life. If you don't love what you do, you'd better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don't have a reason for living.
-Ray Bradbury
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Richard Bach with this book does two things. He gives meFlight. He makes me Young. For both I am deeply grateful.
-Ray Bradbury
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Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
-Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (p. xv)
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My stories run up and bite me in the leg -- I respond by writing them down - everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.
-Ray Bradbury
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Books
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-Ray Bradbury, In the coda to a 1979 edition of the book Fahrenheit 451
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Bravery
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You've got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.
-Ray Bradbury
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Censorship
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The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventhday Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor whosees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/451/451.html
-Ray Bradbury, In the coda to a 1979 edition of the book Fahrenheit 451
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Creativity
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We are all cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
-Ray Bradbury
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Facts
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Facts quite often, I fear to confess, like lawyers, put me to sleep at noon. Not theories, however. Theories are invigorating and tonic. Give me an ounce of fact and I will produce you a ton of theory by tea this afternoon. That is, after all, my job.
-Ray Bradbury, From the foreward to Mars and the Mind of Man
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Fear
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First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down.
-Ray Bradbury
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Future, The
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I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
-Ray Bradbury
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Growth
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We're all fools...all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.
-Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man, No Particular Night or Morning, 1951
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Intelligence
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If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
-Ray Bradbury
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Libraries
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You've got to love libraries. You've got to love books. You've got to love poetry. You've got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.
-Ray Bradbury
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Life
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Life is trying things to see if they work.
-Ray Bradbury
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Medicine
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A good night's sleep, or a ten-minute brawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.
-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
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Miracles
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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.
-Ray Bradbury
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Parenting
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When I was a young man, I didn't think about having a family. My wife and I were too poor to have babies. Then all of a sudden, one came along and scared the hell out of us because we had no money. Once the baby arrives, you make do somehow. You fall in love with the baby and life adjusts itself. You find you don't need as much money as you thought. When that happens, you can ask the questions that should have come before the baby.
-Ray Bradbury
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Practice
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I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true -- hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.
-Ray Bradbury
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Reading
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You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
-Ray Bradbury, "Reader's Digest", January, 1994
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Risk
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Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down
-Ray Bradbury
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Science Fiction
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Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.
-Ray Bradbury
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Space
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It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher.
Space travel has again made children of us all.
-Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
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Television
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The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.
-Ray Bradbury
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Thought
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Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
-Ray Bradbury
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Books by and about Ray Bradbury
