Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury

The ravine was indeed the place where you came to look at the two things of life, the ways of man and the ways of the natural world. The town was, after all, only a large ship filled with constantly moving survivors, bailing out the grass, chipping away the rust.

Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.

If you had your way you'd pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you'd leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you'd have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn't go crazy.

Bill, when you're my age, you'll find out it's the little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why?

She lay down in bed. "I simply refuse to die."
"Beg pardon?" he said.
"I won't die!" she said, staring at the ceiling.
"That's what I always claimed," said her husband, and turned over to snore.

Sandwich outdoors isn't a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.

He liked to listen to the silence, he said, if silence could be listened to, for, he went on, in that silence you could hear wildflower pollen sifting down the bee-fried air, by God, the bee-fried air!

...you can have what you want if you really want it.

What they talked of all evening long, no one remembered next day.

Here was where the big summer-quiet winds lived and passed in the green depths, like ghost whales, unseen.

"Lena? What would you think if I tried to invent a Happiness Machine?"
"Something's wrong?" she asked quickly.

Here in the world of people you might give time, money, and prayer with little or no return.

But I'm not afraid. I'm truly curious. Death won't get a crumb by my mouth I won't keep and savor.

Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a ' quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living...

I told him there's about as much chance finding rabbits in hats as brains in heads of certain people I could name, but look he does and so I got these gifts for him.

All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.