Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.
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."
What I’m stealing
Seek quality
Detox or abstain from the toxic aspects of modernity
Develop a backbone before it’s too late
Read and re-read the classics
Tune into the highest fidelity forms of humanity
Linger
Commentary
I re-read this on a whim for the first time in twenty years, and I will just say that it’s a classic for a reason. Bradbury’s prose is the equivalent of gorging on a whole torchon of foie gras. It's extremely rich and leaves one feeling slightly nauseated from too much of a good thing, but you can’t help but go back for a bit more. Eerily prescient.
Supplemental Resources
Dog ears, highlights, marginalia
Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
**Note:** Linger
The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.
“But that would just nibble the edges. The whole culture's shot through. The skeleton needs melting and reshaping.
Granger stood looking back with Montag. "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 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."
"Nobody listens any more. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read."iw Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?"
"I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help."
"You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not.
No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and and in old friends; look for it un nature and look for it in yourself.