“I Think The Only Way We Can Grow And Get On In This World Is To Accept The Fact We’re Not Perfect

June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past.

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Al Parker illustration for Ray Bradbury

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 ... get sadder younger than anyone else in the world.

– Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“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”

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

Happy 100th birthday, Ray Bradbury (b. 22 August 1920) 

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)

"All things, once seen, they didn’t just die, that couldn’t be. It must be then that somewhere, searching the world, perhaps in the dripping multiboxed honeycombs where light was an amber sap stored by pollen-fired bees, or in the thirty thousand lenses of the noon dragonfly’s gemmed skull you might find all the colors and sights of the world in any one year. Or pour one single drop of this dandelion wine beneath a microscope and perhaps the entire world of July Fourth would firework out in Vesuvius showers. This he would have to believe."

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

"Science fiction is the art of the possible."

—Ray Bradbury, born on this day in 1920

“‘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, Fahrenheit 451