Ray Bradbury Quotes
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I never consciously place symbolism in my writing. That would be a self-conscious exercise and self-consciousness is defeating to any creative act. Better to get the subconscious to do the work for you, and get out of the way. The best symbolism is always unsuspected and natural. During a lifetime, one saves up information which collects itself around centers in the mind; these automatically become symbols on a subliminal level and need only be summoned in the heat of writing.
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All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.
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When I finished writing it, I was crying. I knew at long last, after ten years of trying, I had written something good.
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Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.
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People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.
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Life is about trying things to see if they work.
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Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.
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Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.
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Ideas and philosophies change just as machines do. Religions changed because of the birth control pill. Politics changes because of the hydrogen bomb. All because of science fictional inventions.
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What's the point of having a library full of books you've already read?
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The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.
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You learn to live with your crazy enthusiasms which nobody else shares, and then you find a few other nuts like yourself, and they're your friends for a lifetime. That's what friends are, the people who share your crazy outlook and protect you from the world, because nobody else is going to give a damn what you're doing, so you need a few other people like yourself.
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The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
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You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library everyday of your life.
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Those women like to see their tongues dance.
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Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything.
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If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.
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I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.
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To solve the drug problem, we have to start at the root - first grade. If a boy has all the toys in his head that reading can give him, and you hook him into science fiction, then you've got the future secured.
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Are you happy?" she Clarisse said. "Am I what?" he Montag cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently.
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You must never name the goal. You must never tell us the target you're hitting for. You must automatically go toward it without ever naming it.
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Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.
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You've got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.
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How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.