Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles (1950)

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There they go, off to Mars, just for the ride, thinking that they will find a planet like a seer's crystal, in which to read a miraculous future. What they'll find, instead, is the somewhat shopworn image of themselves. Mars is a mirror, not a crystal.

Ray Bradbury

The animal does not question life. It lives. Its very reason for living is life; it enjoys and relishes life.

Ray Bradbury

What church could compete with the fireworks of the pure soul?

Ray Bradbury

The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land.

Ray Bradbury

Summertime, 1950, I recognized Isherwood browsing in a Santa Monica bookstore. My book had just come out, so I grabbed a copy off the shelf, signed it and gave it to him. His face fell and my heart sank, but two days later he called and said, "Do you know what you've done?" I asked, "What?" And he simply told me to read his review in the Times. His rave turned my life around; the book immediately made the best-seller lists and has been in print ever since.
He was very kind in introducing me to various people he thought I should know, like Aldous Huxley, who had been my literary hero since Brave New World came out.

Ray Bradbury

Timothy looked at the deep ocean sky, trying to see Earth and the war and the ruined cities and the men killing each other since the day he was born. But he saw nothing. The war was as removed and far off as two flies battling to the death in the arch of a great high and silent cathedral. And just as senseless...
What are you looking at so hard, Dad?
I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace, and responsibility.
All that up there?
No. I didn't find it. It's not there any more. Maybe it'll never be there again. Maybe we fooled ourselves that it was ever there.

Ray Bradbury

Why live? Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of more life and the living of as good a life as possible.

Ray Bradbury

Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.

Ray Bradbury

The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, 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 rediculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humor.

Ray Bradbury

I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite.

Ray Bradbury

It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.

Ray Bradbury

I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I've got what amounts to a religion, now.

Ray Bradbury

The gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

Ray Bradbury

You don't question Providence. If you can't have the reality, a dream is just as good.

Ray Bradbury

We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big beautiful things. The only reason we didn't set up hot-dog stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because it was out of the way and served no large commercial purpose.

Ray Bradbury

The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.

Ray Bradbury

They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

Ray Bradbury

I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.

Ray Bradbury