Ray Bradbury Quotes

“The one sure way I can dishonor myself is by worrying about my reputation.”

“I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.”

“Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much?”

“I can write faster on a typewriter than you can on a computer. I do 120 words a minute, and you can't do that on a computer.”

“I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!”

“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.”

“I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I'll be around a long time. A thousand years from now, a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade.”

“Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?' 'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”

“Life shoould be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at other move forward with it.”

“That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.”

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

“What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?”

“Action is hope. There is no hope without action.”

“I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously.”

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

“If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy or both-you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out.”

“What's the point of having a library full of books you've already read?”

“We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

“A library is all the university you will ever need.”

“All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn't matter if you have a beautiful face or not.”

“If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture.”

“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.”

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

“Books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out, silently, when put to the torch.”