Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.
I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember!
Joy is the grace we say to God.
Remember, with writing, what you’re looking for is just one person to come up and tell you, ‘I love you for what you do.’
Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man’s attitude when he has power.
Night had come on like the closing of a great but gentle eye.
And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it’s like it’s morning again and I’m starting the day over.
I am not a science fiction writer. I am a fantasy writer. But the label got put on me and stuck.
Remember, Montag, we’re the happiness boys. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.
You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl’s better off dead.
The major networks, the cable networks, they’re being prosecutors. They’re judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. But they’re doing it.
Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ’em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.
There is more than one way to burn a book.
Each person was himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid, always alone. If I should scream, if I should call for help, would anyone hear would it even matter?
Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.
I’ll hold on to the world tight some day. I’ve got one finger on it now; that’s a beginning.
I am madness maddened when it comes to books, writers, and the great granary silos where their wits are stored.
Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.
You knew the sweetness of now, now, TONIGHT! who cares for tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, yesterday is over and done, tonight live, tonight!
Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.