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

About the author

Popular quotes

“I am, of course, aware that for over two hundred years scholars have laboured to keep history and theology, or history and faith, at arm’s length from one another. There is a good intention behind this move: each of these disciplines has its own proper shape and logic, and cannot simply be turned into a branch of the other.”
― N.T. Wright, quote from The Resurrection of the Son of God

“Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following.”
― Paul Johnson, quote from Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties

“I write not for sensation, but for Truth. I leave judgement to the hearts of my good Readers everywhere.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife

“Whenever you see, in an official lectionary, the command to omit two or three verses, you can normally be sure that they contain words of judgment. Unless, of course, they are about sex.”
― N.T. Wright, quote from Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“From the first note I knew it was different from anything I had ever heard.... It began simply, but with an arresting phrase, so simple, but eloquent as a human voice. It spoke, beckoning gently as it unwound, rising and tensing. It spiraled upward, the tension growing with each repeat of the phrasing, and yet somehow it grew more abandoned, wilder with each note. His eyes remained closed as his fingers flew over the strings, spilling forth surely more notes than were possible from a single violin. For one mad moment I actually thought there were more of them, an entire orchestra of violins spilling out of this one instrument. I had never heard anything like it--it was poetry and seduction and light and shadow and every other contradiction I could think of. It seemed impossible to breathe while listening to that music, and yet all I was doing was breathing, quite heavily. The music itself had become as palpable a presence in that room as another person would have been--and its presence was something out of myth.”
― Deanna Raybourn, quote from Silent in the Grave

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.