# Dandelion Wine

- Author: [Ray Bradbury](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury.md)
- Quotes: 14
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine

## Quotes

> “No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. 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.”

p. 85 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/no-said-the.md)

> Kindness and intelligence are the preoccupations of age. Being cruel and thoughtless is far more fascinating when you’re twenty.

p. 147 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/kindness-and-intelligence.md)

> 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.

p. 134 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/any-town-new.md)

> Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple.

p. 223 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/grandma-he-had.md)

> Well, I can’t waste a morning arguing with ten-year olds. Needless to say, I was ten myself once and just as silly.

p. 71 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/well-i-cant.md)

> And then, quite suddenly, summer was over.

p. 235 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/and-then-quite.md)

> I’m not afraid. When you live as long as I’ve lived, you lose that, too. I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I’d never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can’t say I’m greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don’t fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it.

p. 150 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/im-not-afraid.md)

> Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft.

p. 81 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/old-men-only.md)

> I’ve alway known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It’s essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don’t know.

p. 151 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/ive-alway-known.md)

> Next year’s going to be even bigger, days will be brighter, nights longer and darker, more people dying, more babies born, and me in the middle of it all.

p. 235 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/next-years-going.md)

> Oh, God, children are children, old women are old women, and nothing in between. They can’t imagine a change they can’t see.

p. 74 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/oh-god-children.md)

> The sun did not rise, it overflowed.

p. 211 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/the-sun-did.md)

> The first thing you learn in life is you’re a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you’re the same fool.

p. 62 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/the-first-thing.md)

> “I don’t know,” he admitted.
>
> “Well.” She started pouring tea. “To start things off, what do you think of the world?”
>
> “I don’t know anything.”
>
> “The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.”
>
> “You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years.”
>
> “It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”
>
> They both laughed quietly.

p. 142 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-bradbury/dandelion-wine/i-dont-know.md)