Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Artwork by Silvia Orione

The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward.
[...]

Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but—what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle.

Well, wasn't there a wall between him and Mildred, when you came down to it? Literally not just one wall but, so far, three!

[...]

Then he reached up and pulled back the grille of the air conditioning system and reached far back inside to the right and moved still another sliding sheet of metal and took out a book.

The old man looked as if he had not been out of the house in years. He and the white plaster walls inside were much the same. There was white in the flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white and his eyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness there. Then his eyes touched on the book under Montag's arm and he did not look so old any more and not quite as fragile.

[...]

Faber poured two glasses of whisky.

"We'll need these."
They drank.

[...]

"You know the war's on?"
"I heard."
"God, isn't it funny?" said the old man. "It seems so remote because we have our own troubles."

[...]

He saw Faber stop up his own breath for fear of drawing that ghost into his own body, perhaps, being contaminated with the phantom exhalations and odours of a running man.

Montag tried to see the men's faces, the old faces he remembered from the firelight, 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 glow, with the light in them.

[...]

"What have you to offer?" 

"Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little of Revelation, but I haven't even that now.[...] But I've forgotten!" "No, nothing's ever lost. [...] It'll come when we need it." 

[...]

"We're book-burners, too. [...] Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. [...] Then [...] we met [...] and got the loose network together". 

[...]

There was a shriek and the jets from the city were gone overhead long before the men looked up. 

[...]as quick as the whisper of a scythe the war was finished. 

[...]The first bomb struck. 

[...]"Phoenix."