Why Is It," He Said, One Time, At The Subway Entrance, "I Feel I've Known You So Many Years?" "Because

“Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time...”

-Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“Beware the autumn people.”

— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Happy 100th birthday, Ray Bradbury (b. 22 August 1920) 

“we need not destroy the horrific whale of reality, we may lurk inside it with machineries, plotting our destinies and going our terror-fraught ways toward an hour when we can lie under those stranger suns and bask easy and breathe light and know peace.”

— ray bradbury, “the ardent blasphemers,” introduction to 20,000 leagues under the sea by jules verne

"That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts."  -Ray Bradbury, "The October Country"

Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist

(via macrolit)

𝚁𝚊𝚢 𝙱𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚢 Los Angeles, 1980

The One Who Waits

“We bend to the well, looking down. From the cool depths six faces peer back up at us.

One by one we bend until our balance is gone, and one by one drop into the mouth and down through cool darkness into the cold waters.”

— Ray Bradbury