Like every kid, I was forced to read Fahrenheit 451 in high school.

“We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.” – Ray Bradbury

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

A portrait of Keith Richards that is aging rapidly in order to keep him alive.

If there was one quality Bradbury prized above all others in a writer, it was gusto. And it was a quality that Bradbury had in spades.

The ultimate purpose of language is not destructive but creative, and it is this very power of language which is a fundamental reality upon which any civilized society pivots. It is this reality, so self-evident and yet so fraught with implications, which attracted many of us to the study of words in the first place.

“The billionaire goes for long walks at night alone amongst the ruins, sweeping dust from recent sandstorms off windowsills and open doorways. At night, when the stars come out, different constellations are framed by unglazed windows, as if justifying these concrete forms from above with the poetic force of celestial geometry.”