“we Need Not Destroy The Horrific Whale Of Reality, We May Lurk Inside It With Machineries, Plotting

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

-- Ray Bradbury

(Chambéry, France)

There Will Come Soft Rains

“And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.”

— Ray Bradbury

"Science fiction is the art of the possible."

—Ray Bradbury, born on this day in 1920

My heart did not beat, it exploded.

I did not warm to a subject, I boiled over.

I have always run fast and yelled loud about a list of great and magical things I knew I simply could not live without.

"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

September Loneliness

Ray Bradbury// September Morn, Paul Émile Chabas// "Persephone", Alice Jones// Painting with the Padre, Daniel Garber// Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami// Sunny September, Helen McNicoll// "Autumn Psalm", Julia de Burgos

What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people.

There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time look like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight – Tomas shoved a hand into the wind outside the truck – tonight you could almost taste time.” ― Ray Bradbury, “The Martian Chronicles” (William Morrow Paperbacks; May 21, 2013) (via Alive on All Channels)

Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?" "Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.

—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