Ray Bradbury, the most influencial writer of 19th century and the legend of science-fiction have found a peace on June 5, 2012. I am not sure how my life and the life of thousands of people would turn without his extraordinary ideas and the gift of intuitive writing. I ain't as big fan of science-fiction as my dad but I fulfilled my child "duty" by taking out books from my parents extended library and reading it one by one. As a pretty advanced reader from an age of 8, I found my last reserve by my 13th birthday on the shelf carefully collected by my father, and there they were - "The Martian Chronicles", "Fahrenheit 451", "Dandelion Wine", "Something Wicked This Way Comes", the quiet of bit set of Ray Bradbury books and collections of novels. It wasn't a "duty" anymore, but the fascinating world of a man who creates realities with a tip of his pencil!
"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them."
- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury is credited with writing 27 novels and over 600 short stories. More than eight million copies of his works, published in over 36 languages, have been sold around the world. He died in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91 after a "lengthy illness", coincidentally during a rare transit of Venus.
