The Halloween Tree By Ray Bradbury, 1972

My heart did not beat, it exploded.

I did not warm to a subject, I boiled over.

I have always run fast and yelled loud about a list of great and magical things I knew I simply could not live without.

June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past.

Ray Bradbury, dandelion wine

It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason.

Ray Bradbury

“Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.”

—

Alberto Manguel

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.

Ray Bradbury, the lake

There Will Come Soft Rains

“And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.”

— Ray Bradbury

“I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we’re not perfect and live accordingly.”

— Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

that burning guilt you feel