The Crowd

“So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”

— Ray Bradbury, “Zen in the Art of Writing”

“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

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” - Ray Bradbury

The Bookworm, Carl Spitzweg, 1850.

“I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn’t forget, I’m alive, I know I’m alive, I mustn’t forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.”

— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)

“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

"That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts."  -Ray Bradbury, "The October Country"

"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them."

-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

"do your own bit of saving. that way, if you drown, at least you'll die knowing you were heading for shore."

The years go by. The time flies. Every single second is a moment in time that passes. And it seems like nothing - but when you’re looking back... well, it amounts to everything.

-- Ray Bradbury

From our stacks: Illustration for "A Sound of Thunder," from The Golden Apples of the Sun. Ray Bradbury. With Drawings by Joe Mugnaini. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972.