But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

— Ray Bradbury

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don't have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

— Ray Bradbury

Come on, get up, get up, you can't just sit! But he was still crying and that had to be finished.

— Ray Bradbury

Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.

— Ray Bradbury

Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.

— Ray Bradbury

Create a character with an obsession, then follow.

— Ray Bradbury

Creativity is a continual surprise.

— Ray Bradbury

Dad, will they ever come back?"" No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road."" Oh, no," said Will." Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun." They moved around the carousel slowly." What will they look like? How will we know them?"" Why," said Dad, quietly, "maybe they're already here." Both boys looked around swiftly. But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves. Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad. Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole. Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will. Jim stroked a horse's mane. Will patted a horse's shoulders. The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night. Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey. Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy. Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Hallway. Lord. Each read the thoughts in the other's eyes. How easy, thought Will. Just this once, thought Jim. But then, thought Charles Hallway, once you start, you'd always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after a while, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally... The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment....finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks...proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows.... Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here.

— Ray Bradbury

Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered...sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks...

— Ray Bradbury

Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.

— Ray Bradbury