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"Do you really think they'll listen then?"
"If not, we'll just have to wait We'll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people A lot will be lost that way, of course But you can't make people listen They have to co what happened and why the world blew up under them It can't last"
"How many of you are there?"
"Thousands on the roads, the abandoned railtracks, tonight, bums on the outside, libraries inside It wasn't planned, at first Each man had a book he wanted to remember, and did Then, over a period of twenty years or so, we ether and set out a plan Thewe had to pound into ourselves is that ere not important, we mustn't be pedants; ere not to feel superior to anyone else in the world We're nothing nificance otherwise Some of us live in small towns Chapter One of Thoreau's Walden in Green River, Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine Why, there's one town in Maryland, only twenty-seven people, no bomb'll ever touch that town, is the compete essays of a man named Bertrand Russell Pick up that town, ales to a person And when the war's over, soain, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age, e ain But that's the wonderful thing about ives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is i"
"What do we do tonight?" asked Montag
"Wait," said Granger "And move downstream a little ways, just in case"
He began throwing dust and dirt in the fire
The otherhelped, and there, in the wilderness, the ether
They stood by the river in the starlight
Montag saw the luminous dial of his waterproof Five Five o'clock in the le hour, and daaiting beyond the far bank of the river
"Why do you trust
A man moved in the darkness
"The look of you's enough You haven't seen yourself in a mirror lately Beyond that, the city has never cared so much about us to bother with an elaborate chase like this to find us A few crackpots with verses in their heads can't touch the as the vast population doesn't wander about quoting the Magna Carta and the Constitution, it's all right The fireh to check that, now and then No, the cities don't bother us And you look like hell"
Theytried to see the ht, lined and tired He was looking for a brightness, a resolve, a triumph over tomorrow that hardly seemed to be there Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge they carried, to glow as lanterns gloith the light in theht had come from the campfire, and theserace, searched a long search, seen good things destroyed, and now, very late, were gathered to wait for the end of the party and the blowing out of the las they carried in their heads ht, they were sure of nothing save that the books were on file behind their quiet eyes, the books aiting, with their pages uncut, for the custoht coers
Montag squinted from one face to another as they walked