Ray Bradbury Quotes

As the dead rise to live, the live sink to die, the currents are deep and raging inside.

If Under fell, if Over leaped, If death was life and Death life reaped, Something rises from the gloom, To make the Underland a tomb Hear it scratching down below, Rat of long forgotten snow, Evil cloaked in coat of White, Will the Warrior drain your light? What could turn the Warrior week? What do burning Gnawers seek? Just a barely speaking pup That holds the Land of Under up Die the baby, die his heart Die his most essential part Die the peace that rules the hour, Gnawers have their key to power

People like death and mayhem.

There will come a time of fire and night, when enemies rise and empires fall, when the stars themselves begin to die.

There were faces at the windows and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightnings slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The Dead travel fast.

He's no more human than I am, ma petite." At least I'm not dead." That can be remedied.

I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.

Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.

Rafael, the Rat King, stared at the carnage with black-button eyes. "She is dead." "Ding dong, the witch is dead.

In moments Akiva was up in the ether, scarcely feeling the sting of ice crystals in the thin air. He let his glamour fall away, and his wings were like sheets of fire sweeping the black of the heavens. He moved at speed, onward toward another human city to find another doorway bitter with the devil's magic, and after that another, until all bore the black handprint....Once all the doors were marked, the end would begin. And it would begin with fire.

Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.

It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.

Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

Both of us will die today, gunned down or smashed up or exploded in some terrible moment of fire and twisted metal, and when they go to bury us we'll be so melted together and entwined they won't be able to separate the bodies; pieces of him will go with me, and pieces of me will go with him.

When the ghost comes round at midnight Well you both can have some fun He can drive you mad, he can make you sad He can keep you from the sun When they take him down, he'll be both safe and sound And the hand does fit the glove And no matter what they tell you, There's good and evil in everyone.

What matters most has an ultimate metallic quality of death. The chasuble and the wagon wheel, the razor and the prickly beards of shepherds, the bare moon, a fly, humid cupboards, rubble piles, the images of saints covered in lace, quicklime, and the wounding edges of the rooflines and watchtowers.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

Zeus most glorious and most great, Thundercloud, throned in the heavens! Let not the sun go down and the darkness come, until I cast down headlong the citadel of Priam in flames, and burn his gates with blazing fire, and tear to rags the shirt upon Hectors breast! May many of his men fall about him prone in the dust and bite the earth!

Sometimes the dead are more alive than the living. And they can kill the living.

He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

Dead … might not be quiet at all.