There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time look like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight – Tomas shoved a hand into the wind outside the truck – tonight you could almost taste time.” ― Ray Bradbury, “The Martian Chronicles” (William Morrow Paperbacks; May 21, 2013) (via Alive on All Channels)
Michael Whelan’s cover art for the 40th anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles (1990)
Source
"do your own bit of saving. that way, if you drown, at least you'll die knowing you were heading for shore."
“October in the Chair,” Neil Gaiman, featured in M is for Magic
The One Who Waits
“We bend to the well, looking down. From the cool depths six faces peer back up at us.
One by one we bend until our balance is gone, and one by one drop into the mouth and down through cool darkness into the cold waters.”
— Ray Bradbury
* * * *
“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
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
'Yes, Mr. Douglas, insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.'
— Ray Bradbury, "The Meadow"