"Listen," said Granger, taking his arm, and walking with him, holding aside the bushes to let him
pass. "When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind
man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he
made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands.
And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I
cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or
help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes
the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was
no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never
gotten over his death. Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he
died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by
his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten
million fine actions the night he passed on."...

..."Everyone must leave something behind when he dies,my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand  touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawncutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."...

"My grandfather...hoped that some day our cities would open up and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, some day it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be. You see?" Granger turned to Montag. "Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said earlier, he was a sculptor. 'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said,
'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'"

from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury