*Originally Published Under The Title "The Naming Of Names"

“All graves are wrong graves when you come down to it,” he said. “No,” I said. “There are right graves and wrong ones, just as there are good times to die and bad times.”

—Ray Bradbury, The Kilimanjaro Device

“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. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

— Ray Bradbury

“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

"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them."

-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

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)

“And a last thought from Tom: O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death? And the thought returned: When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

― Ray Bradbury, quote from The Halloween Tree

Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?" "Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.

—Ray Bradbury

The Small Assassin, Ray Bradbury

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.”

— Ray Bradbury

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”  - Ray Bradbury