"Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art,..." - Quote by Ray Bradbury

“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.”

“In our time the search for extraterrestrial life will eventually change our laws, our religions, our philosophies, our arts, our recreations, as well as our sciences. Space, the mirror, waits for life to come look for itself there.”

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!”

“Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.”

“A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.”

“With my art, it's the one thing that I know will outlive me and outlive my feelings. It will outlive my depressive seasons.”

“I'm one of the world's most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.”

“Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.”

“Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.”