American author (1920-2012)
Mars is opening up. It's a frontier now, like in the old days on Earth, out West, and in Alaska. Men are pouring up here. There's a couple thousand black Irish mechanics and miners and day laborers in First Town who need saving, because there're too many wicked women came with them, and too much ten-century-old Martian wine.
RAY BRADBURY
The Illustrated Man
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
RAY BRADBURY
Fahrenheit 451
I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.
RAY BRADBURY
Fahrenheit 451
"Mars is empty, there is no life there," we shout: There is life on Mars, and it is us. We are the Martians. We give ourselves a gift of us. We are more than water, we are more than earth, we are more than sun. We are the Life Force giving itself a reason for being.
RAY BRADBURY
A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers
Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off.
RAY BRADBURY
introduction, The Circus of Dr. Lao
A Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time ... I was born out of New York. The things that are most wrong here summoned me.
RAY BRADBURY
Long After Midnight
One day Earth will be as Mars is today. This will sober us. It's an object lesson in civilizations.
RAY BRADBURY
The Martian Chronicles
You don't question Providence. If you can't have the reality, a dream is just as good.
RAY BRADBURY
The Martian Chronicles
I wonder ... if Mars is hell? Only waiting for our arrival before it bursts into brimstone and fire.
RAY BRADBURY
The Illustrated Man
Science-fiction works hand-in-glove with the universe.
RAY BRADBURY
introduction, The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories
God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.
RAY BRADBURY
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.
RAY BRADBURY
Fahrenheit 451
I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them -- one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.
RAY BRADBURY
attributed, Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction
Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do.
RAY BRADBURY
Salon.com, August 29, 2001
I laugh until I weep
And weep until I smile
RAY BRADBURY
"Christ, Old Student in a New School"
We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves.
RAY BRADBURY
attributed, CNN: Living, August 2, 2010