Now, a Literary Moment...

As a boy, Ray Bradbury devoured the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Rice Burrows and Jules Verne. If Bradbury could save just one book in all the world -- the way his characters do in Fahrenheit 451 -- what would it be? Charles Dickens' classic tale, A Christmas Carol.

Bradbury: I think that book has influenced my life more than almost more than any other book because it's a book about life, it's a book about death. It's a book about triumph--in the morning when Scrooge wakes up and discovers it's not too late, he can do his life over and he has another chance. And you weep for the old man and you're glad that he's discovered before it's too late that he can change and that he can fully come alive for the first time in 50 years.

Narrator: Writer Ray Bradbury.

This Literary Moment was created by The National Endowment for the Arts.