Ray Bradbury Quotes
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It's poor judgment', said Grandpa 'to call anything by a name. We don't know what a hobgoblin or a vampire or a troll is. Could be lots of things. You can't heave them into categories with labels and say they'll act one way or another. That'd be silly. They're people. People who do things. Yes, that's the way to put it. People who *do* things.
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Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic.
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For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. Such are the autumn people.
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I think we're doing a dreadful job of educating.
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Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
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And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying face of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman.
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Don't think about things, just do them; don't predict them, just make them.
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We're a free society; we've got television. We have radio. We have newspapers. We have the videocassette, which is coming into play. These are new freedoms.
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We meet on the common ground of an uncommon age and share out our gifts of dark and light, good and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow.
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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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Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there was it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away.
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You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
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I don’t write things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell. I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun.
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I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember!
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When you go home tonight, make a list of the people who are impediments, who don't believe in you, and call them up and tell them, 'Get the hell out of my life.' You don't need them. Writing is tough enough without having people around you who contribute to a writer's insecurity.
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So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.
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When the wind is right, a faint odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator McCarthy.
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Kill two birds with one stone, feed the homeless to the hungry.
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Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
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The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, ‘DON’T THINK!’
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What church could compete with the fireworks of the pure soul?
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A book is a loaded gun.
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My parents read the comics to me, and I fell in love with comic strips. I've collected them all of my life. I have a complete collection of all the "Buck Rogers" Sunday funnies and daily paper strips, I have all of "Prince Valiant" put away, all of "Tarzan," which appeared in the Sunday funnies in 1932 right on up through high school. So I've learned a lot from reading comics as a child.
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You don't have to worry about the future, you don't worry about the past - you just explode.