Why Is It," He Said, One Time, At The Subway Entrance, "I Feel I've Known You So Many Years?" "Because

Some people turn sad awfully young ... No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer, and ... get sadder younger than anyone else in the world.

– Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury

Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury!

August 22, 1920

“I’ll make a sound that’s so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns.”

The Fog Horn, Ray Bradbury

—Somewhere a Band is Playing, Ray Bradbury

[text ID: Somewhere a band is playing

Oh listen, oh listen that tune!

If you learn it you’ll dance on forever

In June and yet June and more June.

And Death will be dumb and not clever

And Death will lie silent forever

In June and June and more June.]

Joseph Mugnaini - The Halloween Tree, 1972

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (William Morrow Paperbacks; April 23, 2013) (via Cultural Offering)

I read that a few years ago and it was WILD. I only remember picking it up because it was mentioned in an episode of Criminal Minds and it sounded crazy haha

It really is! I find a lot of Ray Bradbury stories completely out there, ESPECIALLY considering how old they are!

And obligatory favourite quotes, and they are all related to death, because of course, Ray 💀💀💀

Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.

Oh, death in space was most humorous.

And now the great loose brain was disintegrating. The components of the brain which had worked so beautifully and efficiently in the skull case of the rocket ship firing through space were dying one by one; the meaning of their life together was falling apart. And as a body dies when the brain ceases functioning, so the spirit of the ship and their long time together and what they meant to one another was dying.

"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them."

-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

So like....where does Ray Bradbury fall on the cozy horror scale?

Because there's a coziness in the nostalgia of long ago Halloweens in The Halloween Tree.

There's a coziness in the Elliotts family, made up of monsters, ghouls, and one perfectly average boy, from The Dust Returned.

There are even cozy aspects in Something Wicked This Way Comes, that even when there's a dark carnival changing and warping people, William Halloway still finds comfort and reassurance in the presence of his father.

Bradbury sure knew how to make horror stories memorable and terrifying, and yet, some of them feel like a warm blanket on a chill, autumn night.