"Jesus God," said Montag. "Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! I don't hear those idiot bastards in your parlor talking about it. God, Millie, don't you see? An hour a day, two hours, with these books, and maybe... "
-Montag
"Oh, look at me, Montag. the man who loved books, no, the boy who was wild for them, insane for them, who climbed the stacks likea chimpanzee gone made for them.
I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philsophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em. And then... and then..." The Fire Chief's voice fades.
-Beatty
"Have I changed my mind about much that it said to me, when I was a younger writer? Only if by change you mean has my love libraries widened and deepened, to which the answer is a yes that ricochets off the stacks and dusts talcum off the librarian's cheek."
-Ray Bradbury
Quotes from the masterpiece of all novels, Fahrenheit 451
