The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men.
INTERVIEWERYou__e self-educated, aren__ you?BRADBURYYes, I am. I__ completely library educated. I__e never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn__ want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. But with the library, it__ like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there__ so much to look at and read. And it__ far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don__ have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on__ell, what if you don__ like those books?I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.
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INTERVIEWERYou__e self-educated, aren__ you?BRADBURYYes, I am. I__ completely library educated. I__e never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn__ want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. But with the library, it__ like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there__ so much to look at and read. And it__ far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don__ have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on__ell, what if you don__ like those books?I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.
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