From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But, lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. M.
My cowardice is such of passion, complimenting the revolutionary spirit that lives in its shadow.
A young reader finding this book today, or the day after tomorrow, is going to have to imagine first a past, and then a future that belongs to that past.
They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the words of God spoken and vibrating in the shared deep.
You are all there, the people in the city. I can’t believe I was ever among you. When you are away from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living.
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 can put up with him, can you?
There is no cause for nostalgia save the good and life-enhancing nostalgia for the present.
Somewhere on the Earth tonight, my Tylla, there is a Man with a Lever, which, when he pulls it, Will Save The World. The man is now unemployed. His switch gathers dust. He himself plays pinochle.
The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.
I believe in having fun first, and along the way, if you teach people, if you influence people, well and good. But I don’t want to set out to influence people. I don’t want to set out to change the world in any self-conscious way. That way leads to self-destruction; that way, you’re pontificating, and that’s dangerous and it’s boring – you’re going to put people right to sleep.
The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway.
Moundshroud, leaning over, gave a snort: “Why those are Sins, boys! And nondescripts. There crawls the Worm of Conscience!
Come on, get up, get up, you can’t just sit! But he was still crying and that had to be finished.
And Will? Why, he’s the last peach, high on a summer tree. Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they’re not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it’s not that. It’s just, you know, seeing them pass, that’s how they’ll be all their life; they’ll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? how can it happen to them?
The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine percent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.
Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words.
Far away in the cool dim empty rooms of the big old house, a silver bell tinkled and faded.
In real life, as we know, the failure to relax a particular tension can lead to madness.
It was pretty silly quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly damn snob. Give man a few lines of verse and he thinks he’s the Lord of all Creation. You think you can walk on water with all your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them.
Amoebas cannot sin because they reproduce by fission. They do not covet wives or murder each other.