A couple quotes from Bradbury - this first one is him on Something Wicked This Way Comes; I found the quote in Stephen King's Danse Macabre, so I'm not sure where it's from:
Along the way I said all and everything, just about, that I would ever want to say about my younger self and how I felt about that terrifying thing: Life, and that other terror: Death, and the exhilaration of both. But above all, I did a loving thing without realizing it. I wrote a paean to my father. I didn't realize it until one night in 1965, a few years after the novel had been published. Sleepless, I got up and prowled my library, found the novel, reread certain passages, and burst into tears. My father was locked into the novel, forever, as the father in the book! I wish he had lived to read himself there, and be proud of his bravery on behalf of his loving son.
And one exchange from the end of The Halloween Tree:
Tom: Oh, Mr Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death?
Moundshroud: When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.