DIVINE HUMOUR

'"Father Peregrine, won't you ever be serious?"

"Not until the good Lord is. Oh don't look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know what else He is except loving. And love has a lot to do with humour, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can  you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge-bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humour." 

"I never thought of God as humorous," said Father Stone. 

"The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now!" Father Peregrine laughed.' 

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, p.153. 

WRITING

'The way I write my novels can best be described as imagining that I'm going into the kitchen to fry a couple of eggs and then find myself cooking up a banquet. Starting with very simple things, they then word-associate themselves with further things until I'm up and running and eager to find out the nest surprise, the next hour, the next day or the next week.'

Ray Bradbury, Farewell Summer, p.163. 

ETERNAL LIFE

'"Just once, though" said Tom, "I'd like one thing. An ice cream cone so big you could just keep eatin' and there isn't any end and you just go on bein' happy with it forever. Wow!"

"There's no such ice cream cone." 

"Just one thing like that is all I ask," said Tom. "One vacation that never had a last day. Or one matinee with Buck Jones, boy, just ridin' along forever, bangin', and Indians fallin' like pop bottles. Gimme just one thing with no tail-end and I'd go crazy."'

Ray Bradbury, Farewell Summer, p.125. 

LEARNING TO LET GO

'Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It's like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That's a triumph. Don't argue with the cataract.'

Ray Bradbury, Farewell Summer, p.113.

BOOKS

'Grandpa's library was a fine dark place bricked with books. so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.'

Ray Bradbury, Farewell Summer, p.62.

FAMILY

'I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family.'

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p.242.

CRYING

'"And besides, I like to cry. After I cry it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over."

"I heard everything now."

"You just won't admit you like crying too. You cry just so long and everything's fine. And there's your happy ending. And you're ready to go back out and walk around with folks again. And it's the start of gosh-knows-what-all! Any time now, Mr Forrester will think it over and see it's just the only way and have a good cry and then look around and see it's morning again, even though it's five in the afternoon."

"That don't sound like no happy ending to me."

"A good night's sleep, of a ten-minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine, Doug. You listen to Tom Spaulding, M.D."'

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p.206.

TIME

'"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 always will 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, Dandelion Wine, p.98.

LIFE

'"The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is that you're the same fool."'
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p.81.

PERFECTION

'...how long can you look a sunset? Who wants a sunset to last? Who wants air smelling good always? So after a while, who would notice? After that let's have something else.'

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p.78.

HAPPINESS

'Should a Happiness Machine, he wondered, be something you can carry in your pocket?

Or, he went on, should it be something that carries you in its pocket?'

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p.68.

WRITING

'This book, like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of such surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.'

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p.vii.

BOOKS

'"...books are to remind us of what asses and fools we are. They're Ceasar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.'"

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, p.112.