Ray Bradbury Quotes

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow aftter your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.

We earth men have a talen for ruining big beautiful things.

The merry-go-round was running, yes, but.

.. It was running backward. The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattle-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanets, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes.

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.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You dont have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher.

Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

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.

We are on impossibility in an impossible universe.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

All flesh is one: what matter scores;

Or color of the suit Or if the helmet glints with blue or gold? All is one bold achievement, All is fine spring-found-again-in-autumn day When juices run in antelopes along our blood, And green our flag, forever green...

Life is trying things to see if they work.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.

I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I'm borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.

Heaven is a house with porch lights.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine.

The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

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.

Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.

You can make yourself happy or miserable - it's the same amount of effort.

You must write every single day of your life.

.. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled.

I don't believe in government. I hate politics. I'm against it. And I hope that sometime this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.

A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

We are all . . . children of this universe. Not just Earth, or Mars, or this system, but the whole grand fireworks. And if we are interested in Mars at all, it is only because we wonder over our past and worry terribly about our possible future.

The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.

Treasure this day and Treasure yourself, truly, neither will ever happen again.

How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

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.

I'm interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.

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.

I don't believe in colleges and universities.

I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Do what you love and love what you do. Don’t do anything for money. Everything should be for love.

Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.

Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

There's no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.

You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.