"The Monster Shrieked Closer, Half Through The Forest Now, Thrashing And Plunging, Crushing The Wildflowers,

“The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.” ― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

An illustration sketch for chapter one of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I'd say there's more to come as I dog-eared a bunch of scenes I'd love to draw, but I had to return the book to my brother-in-law.

The October Country - Book Cover

1970 cover art by Richard Clifton-Dey for The Small Assassin, by Ray Bradbury

from The October Game by Ray Bradbury

“We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy.

Something is missing... It is not books you need, it's some of the things that are in books. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

Ray Bradbury

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

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime. 

~Ray Bradbury (Book: Fahrenheit 451)

[Philo Thoughts]

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

“And a last thought from Tom: O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death? And the thought returned: When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

― Ray Bradbury, quote from The Halloween Tree