October Country By Ray Bradbury Cover By Joe Mugnaini

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

Happy 100th birthday, Ray Bradbury (b. 22 August 1920) 

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”  - Ray Bradbury

“So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”

— Ray Bradbury, “Zen in the Art of Writing”

“waiting out there, and waiting out there, while man comes and goes on this pitiful little planet. waiting and waiting.”

illustration for "the fog horn" by ray bradbury

“A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least.

You can’t act if you don’t know.”

Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

From The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury’s 1949 sci-fi classic.

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

—Ray Bradbury

From our stacks: Illustration for "A Sound of Thunder," from The Golden Apples of the Sun. Ray Bradbury. With Drawings by Joe Mugnaini. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972.