“Sunsets We Always Liked Because They Only Happen Once And Go Away. “But, Lena, That’s Sad.”

"So the dragon ate the white swan. I haven’t seen her for years. I can’t even remember what she looks like. I feel her, though. She’s safe inside, still alive; the essential swan hasn’t changed a feather. Do you know, there are some mornings in spring or fall, when I wake and think, I’ll run across the fields into the woods and pick wild strawberries! Or I’ll swim in the lake, or I’ll dance all night tonight until dawn! And then, in a rage, discover I’m in this old and ruined dragon. I’m the princess in the crumbled tower, no way out, waiting for her Prince Charming."

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy.

Something is missing... It is not books you need, it's some of the things that are in books. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

Ray Bradbury

"It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason."

– Ray Bradbury

“waiting out there, and waiting out there, while man comes and goes on this pitiful little planet. waiting and waiting.”

illustration for "the fog horn" by ray bradbury

The Fog Horn

“That's life for you," said MacDunn. "Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more.”

— Ray Bradbury

“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)

In 1987, the first manned spaceship, under the command of the US Navy, landed on Mars. To their surprise they found homes from various periods in Earth history and what appeared to be the crew’s relatives that have passed on. ("Mars is Heaven", X-Minus One, radio)

“Beware the autumn people.”

— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

from The October Game by Ray Bradbury

“A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least.

You can’t act if you don’t know.”

Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes