Ray Bradbury Quote
Clarisse would have ignored him if it were not for the fact that as she passed, he took something long, white and oddly familiar from his coat and proceeded to chew on it, as on a peppermint stick. Its end devoured, his extraordinary tongue darted within the white confection, sucking out the filling, making contented noises. He was still crunching his goody as she proceeded up the sidewalk to her house, turned the doorknob and walked in. Darling? she called, smiling around. Darling, where are you? She shut the door, walked down the hall and into the living room. Darling. . . She stared at the floor for twenty seconds, trying to understand. She screamed. Outside in the sycamore darkness, the little man pierced a long white stick with intermittent holes; then, softly, sighing, his lips puckered, played a little sad tune upon the improvised instrument to accompany the shrill and awful singing of Clarisse's voice as she stood in the living room. Many times as a little girl Clarisse had run on the beach sands, stepped on a jellyfish and screamed. It was not so bad, finding an intact, gelatin-skinned jellyfish in one's living room. One could step back from it. It was when the jellyfish called you by name . . .
Clarisse would have ignored him if it were not for the fact that as she passed, he took something long, white and oddly familiar from his coat and proceeded to chew on it, as on a peppermint stick. Its end devoured, his extraordinary tongue darted within the white confection, sucking out the filling, making contented noises. He was still crunching his goody as she proceeded up the sidewalk to her house, turned the doorknob and walked in. Darling? she called, smiling around. Darling, where are you? She shut the door, walked down the hall and into the living room. Darling. . . She stared at the floor for twenty seconds, trying to understand. She screamed. Outside in the sycamore darkness, the little man pierced a long white stick with intermittent holes; then, softly, sighing, his lips puckered, played a little sad tune upon the improvised instrument to accompany the shrill and awful singing of Clarisse's voice as she stood in the living room. Many times as a little girl Clarisse had run on the beach sands, stepped on a jellyfish and screamed. It was not so bad, finding an intact, gelatin-skinned jellyfish in one's living room. One could step back from it. It was when the jellyfish called you by name . . .
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About Ray Bradbury
Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).
The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".