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Ray Bradbury Quotes

1920–2012 United States

Ray Douglas Bradbury (22 August 1920 – 5 June 2012) was an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer.

United States
Novelists
Playwrights
Poets
Science fiction authors

Also known as: Bradbury, Ray

Random Ray Bradbury quote

199 quotes

Sunsets are loved because they vanish.

All the sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past.

The October Country (1955)

Those who don't build must burn.

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

All floated upon an evening carrousel, with fitful drifts of music wafting up here and there, and voices calling and murmuring from houses that were whitely haunted by television.

The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

As Man steps down in amiable wisdom
To give himself what no one else can give:
His liberty.

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)

That so much time was wasted in this pain.

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)

He dooms himself. He is his own sad jest.

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)

To hell with more. I want better.

Beyond 1984: The People Machines (1979)

Well, I can’t waste a morning arguing with ten-year olds. Needless to say, I was ten myself once and just as silly.

Dandelion Wine (1957)

We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big beautiful things. The only reason we didn’t set up hot-dog stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because it was out of the way and served no large commercial purpose.

The Martian Chronicles (1950)

I've always written at the top of my lungs and from some secret motives within. I have followed the advice of my good friend Federico Fellini who, when asked about his work, said, "Don't tell me what I'm doing, I don't want to know."

They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

The Martian Chronicles (1950)

I am not a science fiction writer. I am a fantasy writer. But the label got put on me and stuck.

“I didn’t mean…” said laughing.
“Nobody means, but everybody says, and luckily I got the hide of an iguana.”

Long After Midnight (1976)

You know and I know, I am Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, on my way to Eternity with a dead flashlight and no candles.

I Sing the Body Electric! (1969)

The crowd upon the cross gives anguished roar;
A moment terrible to hear.

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)

The sun did not rise, it overflowed.

Dandelion Wine (1957)

I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.

I felt that killing wrench men feel when beauty passes and will not pass again. You want to cry out: Stay. I love you. But you do not speak. And the summer walks away in her flesh, never to return.

The Toynbee Convector (1988)

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.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ray Bradbury (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.