Ray Bradbury Quotes

The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture.

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.

Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.

Ally." Peeta says the words slowly, tasting it. "Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancee. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I'll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out. The problem is, I can't tell what's real anymore, and what's made up.

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.

Tyrion let the eunuch help him mount. "Lord Varys," he said from the saddle, "sometimes I feel as though you are the best friend I have in King's Landing and sometimes I feel you are my worst enemy." "How odd. I think quite the same of you.

You think you're winning, but it's hard to say sometimes.

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

Bad faith makes the most of every ambiguity.

Tohru: Shigure is always smiling. But, I wonder if I gave him some problems with my request. Yuki: The only ones who can truly understand what Shigure is thinking is Hatori and... a few other people. Someone has said this before. It is said that he is like a "tide..." A tide that carries you away when you get too close to it. The tide touches your feet... But when you reach down to touch it, it will have already departed. It is within your reach, yet you may never catch it.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.

I think if you decide that any book is about Only One Thing you're probably wrong. Even if that thing is in there.

The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher.

If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.

I'm not comfortable with categories, and I distrust most definitions. The word 'definition' is based on the word 'finite,' which would seem to indicate that once we've defined something, we don't need to think about it anymore.

Yes and no are soon said, but give much to think over.

It's an important moment as a reader, I think, when you can forget the question of whether you need to know what happened. Some people really want hard explanations. I'm the other way. I like mysteries. I don't want to frustrate people. I don't want people to feel like they got no answers, but I want to approach the mystery and sit with it.

You have to learn to read between the lies.

I guess it's just another one of life's little mysteries." "I'm tired of mysteries." "Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew.

Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't...Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home.

Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.

With old inflation riding the headlines, I have read till I am bleary-eyed, and I can't get head from tails of the whole thing. ... Now we are living in an age of explanations-and plenty of 'em, too-but no two things that's been done to us have been explained twice the same way, by even the same man. It's and age of in one ear and out the other.