Fahrenheit 451 Clarisse Quotes

Are you happy?" she [Clarisse] said. "Am I what?" he [Montag] cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently.

...The girl who had known the weather and never been burnt by fireflies, the girl who had known what dandelions meant rubbed off on your chin. Then, she would be gone.

I'm seventeen and I'm crazy.

She was too wonderful a character to be allowed to die and I realize now that I should have allowed her to appear at hte end of my book. [Ray writes about the character Clarisse]

I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly," she said. "If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur? That's a rose-garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn't that funny, and sad, too?

She was too wonderful a character to be allowed to die and I realize now that I should have allowed her to appear at the end of my book. [Ray writes about the character Clarisse]

But Clarisse’s favorite subject wasn’t herself. It was everyone else, and me. She was the first person in a good many years I’ve really liked. She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted.

Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.

Across the street and down the way the other houses stood with their flat fronts. What was it Clarisse had said one afternoon? “No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn’t look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches. And the gardens, too. Not many gardens anymore to sit around in. And look at the furniture. No rocking chairs anymore. They’re too comfortable. Get people up and running around. My uncle says . . . and . . . my uncle . . . and . . . my uncle . . .” Her voice faded.

N’est-ce pas agréable de se promener à cette heure de la nuit ? J’aime humer les choses, regarder les choses, et il m’arrive de rester toute la nuit debout, à marcher, et de regarder le soleil se lever. (Clarisse McClellan)

If this goes on . . .” thought Ray Bradbury, “nobody will read books anymore,” and Fahrenheit 451 began. He had written a short story once called “The Pedestrian,” about a man who is incarcerated by the police after he is stopped simply for walking. That story became part of the world he was building, and seventeen-year-old Clarisse McLellan becomes a pedestrian in a world where nobody walks.

Apoi Clarisse McClellan vorbi din nou. ― Te superi dacă îţi pun o întrebare? De cît timp eşti pompier? ― De zece ani, de la vîrsta de douăzeci de ani. ― Citeşti vreodată cărţile pe care le arzi? ― E interzis prin lege! rîse el. ― Oh. Desigur. ― E o muncă bună. Luni ardem Millar, miercuri ardem Whitman, vineri Faulkner, le facem scrum, apoi ardem şi scrumul. E deviza noastră oficială. Merseră mai departe şi fata îl întrebă: ― E adevărat că, în urmă cu mulţi ani, pompierii stingeau focurile în loc să le aprindă? ― Nu. Casele au fost întotdeauna construite din material neinflamabil, te rog să mă crezi. ― Ciudat. Am auzit că, odinioară, casele luau foc din întîmplare şi pompierii erau necesari ca să stingă focul. El rîse.

There was a girl next door," he said, slowly. "She's gone now, I think, dead. I can't even remember her face. But she was different. How? How did she happen?" Beatty smiled. "Here or there, that's bound to occur. Clarisse McClellan? We've a record on her family. We've watched them carefully. Heredity and environment are funny things. You can't rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle. We had some false alarms on the McClellans, when they lived in Chicago. Never found a book. Uncle had a mixed record; antisocial. The girl? She was a time bomb. The family had been feeding her subconscious, I'm sure, from what I saw of her school record. She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead.