Quotes from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The library was like a stone quarry where no rain had fallen in ten thousand years. Way off in that direction: silence. Way off in that direction: hush. It was the time between things finished and things begun. Nobody died here. Nobody was born. The library, and all its books, just were. We”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The hot blue-glass eyes of the mannequins watched as the ladies drifted down the empty river bottom street, their images shimmering in the windows like blossoms seen under darkly moving waters.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Mr. Shaw fixed his eyes on a star some twenty light-years away. “What are we?” he asked. “Why, 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. Creation turns in its abyss. We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes. The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force, truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths, fumbles to reach across Time to feel its own flesh and know it to be ours. We touch both ways and find each other miraculous because we are One.” Mr. Shaw turned to glance at his young friend.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“You don’t ask a dream if it is real, or you wake up.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Look at it this way, child, life is a magic show, or should be if people didn't go to sleep on each other. Always leave folks with a bit of mystery, son.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you’re nine, you think you’ve always been nine years old and will always be. When you’re thirty, it seems you’ve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You’re in the present, you’re trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“stone. I hate being clever, thought the captain, when you don’t really feel clever and don’t want to be clever. To sneak around and make plans and feel big about making them. I hate this feeling of thinking I’m doing right when I’m not really certain I am. Who are we, anyway? The majority? Is that the answer? The majority is always holy, is it not? Always, always; just never wrong for one little insignificant tiny moment, is it? Never ever wrong in ten million years? He thought: What is this majority and who are in it? And what do they think and how did they get that way and will they ever change and how the devil did I get caught in this rotten majority? I don’t feel comfortable. Is it claustrophobia, fear of crowds, or common sense? Can one man be right, while all the world thinks they are right? Let’s not think about it. Let’s crawl around and act exciting and pull the trigger. There, and there!”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“When you strip all the clothes away and the doodads, you have two human beings who were either happy or unhappy”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“When you strip all the clothes away and the doodads, you have two human beings who were either happy or unhappy together, and we have no complaints.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“we’re the start of an amazing, dumbfounding history of survival that will only get better as the centuries pass.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“What are we?” he asked. “Why, 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. Creation turns in its abyss. We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes. The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force, truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths, fumbles to reach across Time to feel its own flesh and know it to be ours. We touch both ways and find each other miraculous because we are One.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“They sat on the edge of a brook and took off their shoes and let the water cut their feet off to the ankles with an exquisite cold razor.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the night of close-packed ice cream, of mosquito-lotioned wrists, the night of running children suddenly veered from their games and put away behind glass, behind wood, the popsicles in melting puddles of lime and strawberry where they fell when the children were scooped indoors.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The man just opened his mouth, which meant that all kinds of secret doors in his body gave way. He did not sing so much as let his soul free.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“I bet it’s the eleventh Commandment,” murmured the priest, eyes down. “What would the eleventh Commandment be?” asked Doone, scowling. “Why not: ‘THOU SHALT SHUT UP AND LISTEN’” said the priest. “Ssh.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“This will be the one trip of your life. Keep your eyes wide.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Everyone thinks that. It’s one of those little secrets we keep from each other. Show me a serious man and I’ll show you a man who has never wept. Show me a madman and I’ll show you a man who dried his tears a long time ago. Go ahead.” “I”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.
What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?
Do they even know I'm HERE?”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“So the rest of the summer you could see the two little girls and Tom like wrens on a wire, on Mrs. Bentley’s front porch, waiting. And when the silvery chimes of the icicle man were heard, the front door opened, Mrs. Bentley floated out with her hand deep down the gullet of her silver-mouthed purse, and for half an hour you could see them there on the porch, the children and the old lady putting coldness into warmness, eating chocolate icicles, laughing. At last they were good friends. “How old are you, Mrs. Bentley?” “Seventy-two.” “How old were you fifty years ago?” “Seventy-two.” “You weren’t ever young, were you, and never wore ribbons or dresses like these?” “No.” “Have you got a first name?” “My name is Mrs. Bentley.” “And you’ve always lived in this one house?” “Always.” “And never were pretty?” “Never.” “Never in a million trillion years?” The two girls would bend toward the old lady, and wait in the pressed silence of four o’clock on a summer afternoon. “Never,” said Mrs. Bentley, “in a million trillion years.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Intuited novels are far more ‘true’ than all your scribbled data-fact reportage in the history of the world!”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“went to the Rock to hide my face                 And the Rock cried out, “No Hiding Place,                 There’s no Hiding Place down here.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“You want to cry some more, go on ahead. I did the same last night.” “You, sir?” “God’s truth. Thinking of everything ahead. Both sides figuring the other side will just give up, and soon, and the war done in weeks, and us all home. Well, that’s not how it’s going to be. And maybe that’s why I cried.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Leave these people alone. They've got something good and decent, and you come and foul up the nest and sneer at it. Well, I've talked to them too. I've gone through the city and seen their faces, and they've got something you'll never have -- a little simple faith, and they'll move mountains with it. You, you're boiled because someone stole your act, got here ahead and made you unimportant.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“You're very tired, he said. You've traveled a long way and you belong to a tired people who've been without faith a long time, and you want to believe so much now that you're interfering with yourself. You'll only make it harder if you kill. You'll never find him that way.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“One fire would destroy all of us, no matter who started it, for what reason.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“I remember once, when I lived in the Capital for a month and bought the paper fresh each day, I went wild with love, anger, irritation, frustration; all of the passions boiled in me. I was young. I exploded at everything I saw. But then I saw what I was doing: I was believing what I read. Have you noticed? You believe a paper printed on the very day you buy it? This has happened but only an hour ago, you think! It must be true.' He shook his head. 'So I learned to stand back away and let the paper age and mellow. Back here, in Colonia, I saw the headlines diminish to nothing. The week-old paper—why, you can spit on it if you wish. It is like a woman you once loved, but you now see, a few days later, she is not quite what you thought. She has rather a plain face. She is no deeper than a cup of water.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“Strange. Half my years afraid of life. The other half, afraid of death. Always some kind of afraid.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“It’s the Lord’s space and the Lord’s worlds in space, Father. We must not try to take our cathedrals with us, when all we need is an overnight case.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

“The Martians discovered the secret of life among animals. The animal does not question life. It lives. Its very reason for living is life; it enjoys and relishes life.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

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