"Dandelion Wine": quotes from Ray Bradbury himself

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

"Dandelion Wine" (quotes from the book follow) is a classic by Ray Bradbury. With him you will plunge into the wonderful world of a twelve-year-old boy and spend with him a single summer that will never happen again, however, like any other summer, day, hour or minute. After all, every new dawn is an event, and no matter what it is, joyful or sad, wonderful or full of worries and disappointments, the main thing is that with it you breathe life in full, you really feel alive.

Dandelion Wine: Summer Quotes

It's the summer of 1928. The main character is a twelve-year-old boy, Douglas Spalding, who lives in the small sleepy town of Greentown, which literally means "green city". And it is not for nothing that he was given such a name, because there is so much light and lush greenery around that it seems that there is no “neitherlong autumn, no white winter, no cool green spring”, no, and never will be…

But Douglas, albeit unconsciously, by touch, guesses that sooner or later "June dawns, and July noons, and August evenings" will come to an end. They will remain only in memory, and they need to be considered and summed up. What if something is forgotten? No problem, there's always a bottle of dandelion wine in the cellar with a date on it, so not a single day of summer slips away.

Yes, it's a sunny summer like never before - the last time of his carefree childhood. Autumn is ahead, leading by the hand to the inevitable world of adults. That's why you have to hurry to live, breathe in the aromas of this magical time, run with friends, fool around with your brother, get into incredible adventures, ask endless questions to adults and watch, watch their strange life. We continue to read the novel "Dandelion Wine". Quotes from the work will help convey the atmosphere of a hot summer.

Other residents

And there was someone to watch, yet Douglas is not the only resident. Hot summer days and the whole of Greentown live with him. True, each in their own way. For example, grandfather could not get enough of his wonderful mower. Every time he cut fresh grass, he lamented that the new year should not be celebrated on the first of January. This holiday should be postponed to the summer. As soon as the grass on the lawn is ripe for haymaking, that means that the very day that marks the beginning has come. Instead of shouts of "Hurrah!", fireworks and fanfare, a solemnmower symphony. Instead of confetti and serpentine, a handful of freshly cut grass.

But not everything and everything in Greentown was so wonderful. There was a place for disappointments, tears, impossible quarrels, sadness. In addition, when the sun went down, it became one of the millions of such towns, and it was just as dark and lonely in it. The nightlife was intimidating. She released her monster, whose name is death… A mysterious and terrible Soul Killer roamed the streets. His target is young girls who were in no hurry to return home on quiet, warm summer evenings.

Sip of summer

But it was still summer outside. And it, unlike the fierce winter wind, does not divide, does not separate people, does not disperse them - each to their own home, but unites, calls to enjoy "real freedom and life", and absorb "the warm breath of the world, unhurried and lazy ". And it also gathered together, if not all, then many on the day of the collection of dandelions. It was an unusual tradition - "to catch and cork summer in bottles" - wine from dandelions. Quotes from the book are sure to convey the tart taste of a golden drink.

We cannot collect the sun's rays, put them tightly in a jar and immediately close the lid so that they do not scatter in all directions. “Idle August afternoons, the barely perceptible tapping of the wheels of an ice cream cart, the rustle of cut grass, the ant kingdom humming underfoot” - nothing lasts forever, and even memory can fail. Whether business wine from dandelions! Its soft shimmer is “like flowers opening at dawn”. And evenif on a cold winter day there is a thin layer of dust on the bottle, “the sun of this June” will still peep through it. And if you look through it at a January day, then in an instant "the snow will melt, and the grass will appear, and the birds will sing on the trees, and even the flowers and grass will flutter in the wind." And the "cold lead sky" will definitely turn blue.

Age of soul and body

Another striking thing about Dandelion Wine (citations follow) is that it is not intended for a particular age. As children of adolescence, in fact, the same age as the main character, so people of the older generation will be able to learn a lot for themselves from the work of Ray Bradbury. It is not for nothing that there are so many discussions about age, about what childhood, youth and old age are, and whether numbers mean so much.

For example, elderly people honestly say that the old people still have a much easier life, "because they always look like they know about everything in the world." But is it really so? No, more like a pretense and a mask. And when they are alone, they certainly wink at each other and smile: well, how do you like my confidence, my game, because I'm a good actor? And the author is sure that time is a kind of hypnosis. When a person is nine, it seems to him that the number nine has always been, is and will be. At thirty, we are sure that life will never cross this "beautiful line of maturity." Seventy is seen as something that will always and forever. Yes, we all live only in the present, and it does not matter whether it is young or old. We are differentnever see or know.

About life

The book "Dandelion Wine" is really replete with the author's reasoning about life, about the meaning of being. He puts them both in the mouths of boys and in the mouths of adults. At the same time, it is impossible to say that the former are naive, while the latter have every word - wisdom. Truth is available to everyone, it is without age marking. For example, Douglas tells Tom that his biggest concern is how God rules the world. To which the latter confidently replies that he shouldn’t, because “he still tries.”

Or here's another quote from Bradbury ("Dandelion Wine"): Doug was riding a bike one day, pedaling hard and thinking about "what are the major upheavals in life, where are they, the important turns." “Every person is first born, gradually grows, eventually begins to age and finally dies. The birth is out of our control. But isn't it possible to influence maturity, old age and death in some way?”

And finally, for the true fans of the work "Dandelion Wine" - quotes in English about life: "So if trolleys and runabouts and friends and near friends can go away for a while or go away forever, or rust, or fall apart or die, and if people can be murdered, and if someone like great-grandma, who was going to live forever can die… if all of this is true… then… I, Douglas Spaulding, some day, must…”; ".. I have always believed that true love defines the spirit, although the body sometimes refuses to believe it."