Confession time. I have not (YET) read a Ray Bradbury book. I plan on rectifying this soon. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what a legend the man was. That is why I was so touched to come across this book introduction he wrote shortly before his death. It is quite inspirational from a reader and writer’s perspective.
Here is an excerpt, but you really should read the whole thing:
Think about the butterfly for a moment. A caterpillar crawls along, eating leaves, fastens itself to a tree, and then an impossible miracle occurs: all of a sudden it goes into a protective stage, and, after a time, that caterpillar emerges from its chrysalis, sprouts magnificent wings, and turns into a butterfly. Where is the impulse that tells the butterfly to do any of that? Where was the impulse that caused the stars to form?
The books I brought home from the library caused me to think about the origins of life and the universe. How did it start? Where does it end? I recall Midwestern summer nights, standing on my grandparents’ hushed lawn, and looking up at the sky at the confetti field of stars. There were millions of suns out there, and millions of planets rotating around those suns. And I knew there was life out there, in the great vastness. We are just too far apart, separated by too great a distance to reach each one another.
