Quote 1
"Montag, take my word for it, I've had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They're about non-existent people, figments of imagination, if they're fiction. And if they're non-fiction, it's worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another's gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost." (1.629)
Mildred uses the same defense against books, claiming that they are not "real." What are the criteria, in the world of Fahrenheit 451, for what is real and what is not?
Quote 2
Mildred kicked at a book. "Books aren't people. You read and I look around, but there isn't anybody!" (2.20)
This is what the rebels in the woods disprove at the end of the novel.
Quote 3
"Let me alone," said Mildred. "I didn't do anything."
"Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?" (1.558-9)
Fahrenheit 451 reminds us that there are no highs without the lows. Montag can not ever be happy because he’s never been sad.