The Martian Chronicles

What does it matter who is Past or Future, if we are both alive, for what follows will follow, tomorrow or in ten thousand years.

We’re kids in rompers, shouting with our play rockets and atoms, loud and alive.

There were so many things a tree could do: add color, provide shade, drop fruit, or become a children’s playground, a whole sky universe to climb and hang from; an architecture of food and pleasure, that was a tree.
But most of all the trees would distill an icy air for the lungs, and a gentle rustling for the ear when you lay nights in your snowy bed and were gentled to sleep by the sound.

Earth changed in the black sky.
It caught fire.
Part of it seemed to come apart in a million pieces, as if a gigantic jigsaw had exploded.
It burned with an unholy dripping glare for a minute, three times normal size, then dwindled.
“What was that?” Sam looked at the green fire in the sky.
“Earth,” said Elma, holding her hands together.

When you want to do a thing badly enough you lie to yourself. You say the other people are all wrong.

You could see her thoughts swimming around in her eyes, like fish — some bright, some dark, some fast, quick, some slow and easy.

They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature.
They didn’t try too hard to be all men and no animal.
That’s the mistake we made when Darwin showed up.
We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles.
And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn’t mix.
Or at least we didn’t think they did, We were fools.
We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud.
They wouldn’t move very well.
So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion.
We succeeded pretty well.
We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for.
If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life?
Faith had always given us answers to all things.
But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin.
We were and still are a lost people.

“It may be, sir, that we’re looking upon a phenomenon that, for the first time, would absolutely prove the existence of God, sir.”
“There are many people who are of good faith without such proof, Mr. Hinkston.”

She kept looking ahead to see what was there, and, not being able to see it clearly enough, she looked backward toward her husband, and through his eyes, reflected then, she saw what was ahead; and since he added part of himself to this reflection, a determined firmness, her face relaxed and she accepted it and she turned back, knowing suddenly what to look for.