Ray Bradbury’s dark fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes was published in 1962.
The plot revolves on two 13-year-old best friends, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, and their encounter with a traveling carnival that arrives in Green Town, Illinois on October 24th.
I have selected some of the top quotes from Something Wicked This Way Comes novel.
Table of Contents
Something Wicked This Way Comes Quotes by Ray Bradbury
“I’m never going to own anything can hurt me.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Outside, a weather of stars ran clear in an ocean sky.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. So vague, yet so immense. He did not want to live with it. Yet he knew that, during this night, unless he lived with it very well, he might have to live with it all the rest of his life.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a women half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goes when it dies?” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
Other Book Quotes: Christ’s Object Lessons Quotes by Ellen Gould White and The Catcher in the Rye Quotes by J.D. Salinger
Quotes from Something Wicked This Way Comes
“His flesh took paleness from his bones.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Too late, I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“The library is always an adventure!” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“He had written books of a lifetime, on the airs of vast rooms in vast buildings, and had it all fly out the vents.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Death makes everything else sad. But death itself only scares. If there wasn’t death, all the other things wouldn’t get tainted.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“The dust was antique spice, burnt maple leaves, a prickling blue that teemed and sifted to earth. Swarming its own shadows, the dust filtered over the tents.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Far away, in the meadow, shadows flickered in the Mirror’s Maze, as if parts of someone’s life, yet unborn, were trapped there, waiting to be lived.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
Best Something Wicked This Way Comes Quotes
“But no man’s a hero to himself.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“It was in their friendship they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“The man was cold as an albino frog.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Everything that happens before Death is what counts.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
Famous Something Wicked This Way Comes Quotes
“We can’t be good unless we know what bad is, and it’s a shame we’re working against time.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Evil has only the power that we give it.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“The train skimmed on softly, slithering, black pennants fluttering, black confetti lost on its own sick-sweet candy wind, down the hill, with the two boys pursuing, the air was so cold they ate ice cream with each breath.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it & sometimes break in two. I’ve known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before death is what counts.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“I’ll be damned if death wears my sadness as glad rags.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“You had to run with a night like this, so the sadness could not hurt.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
“Men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
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