Ray Bradbury Quotes
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I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.
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Do what you love and love what you do. Don’t do anything for money. Everything should be for love.
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A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.
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They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale.
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Time is so strange and life is twice as strange.
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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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Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?" "To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself-" "And, adding it all up...?" "The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right.
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Like every beginner, I have thought you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.
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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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Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?" "Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.
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Do what you love, don't do anything else.
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Work is the only answer. I have three rules to live by. One, get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin. And when all else fails, run like hell!
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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 knew the sweetness of now, now, TONIGHT! who cares for tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, yesterday is over and done, tonight live, tonight!
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When I was a young writer if you went to a party and told somebody you were a science-fiction writer you would be insulted. They would call you Flash Gordon all evening, or Buck Rogers.
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All education is self-discovery.
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Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power.
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If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.
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All of the good, weird stories I’ve written are based on things I’ve dredged out of my subconscious. That’s the real stuff. Everything else is fake.
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Hello!" He said hello and then said, "What are you up to now?" "I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it. "I don't think I'd like that," he said. "You might if you tried." "I never have." She licked her lips. "Rain even tastes good." "What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked. "Sometimes twice.
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You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.
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Through neglect, ignorance, or inability, the new intellectual Borgias cram hairballs down our throats and refuse us the convulsion that could make us well. They have forgotten, if they ever knew, the ancient knowledge that only by being truly sick can one regain health. Even beasts know when it is good and proper to throw up. Teach me how to be sick then, in the right time and place, so that I may again walk in the fields and with the wise and smiling dogs know enough to chew sweet grass.
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Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything.
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All of my writing is God-given.