Ray Bradbury and Great Prose

Fahrenheit 451

“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, Fahrenheit 451

So quick you might miss it, and rare enough that some few may never have experienced it. Could there be an easier and more amicable comfort found than in those who are happy with who they are and what they have?

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”

-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Who has not experienced this? It is so well understood, and so prettily put, that you can’t help but come away with image and understanding.

“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, Fahrenheit 451

I think this particular quote strikes to the heart of something all people feel to some degree or another. The desire to create or shape something that lasts beyond ourselves. Something meaningful.

“But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.”

-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Very economical, very accurate.