More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.

The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.

Being a hero, the man had observed, is largely a matter of knowing one’s cues.

His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.

I've stayed in houses that were in the country, and in England, but I'm still not sure that I've stayed in an English country house.

Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But historically, anyway, that's not the way the novelistic ecology works.

Most people are blind to magic. They move thru a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing and they’re dead before they die.