Ray Bradbury Quotes

“If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live a full and complete life.”

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

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

“Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.”

“No use going to class unless you go to the library.”

“[His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.”

“There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.”

“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves”

“There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them.”

“Teachers are to inspire; librarians are to fulfill.”

“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.”

“Those who don't build must burn.”

“Time is so strange and life is twice as strange.”

“I want your loves to be multiple. I don't want you to be a snob about anything. Anything you love, you do it.”

“I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, I mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.”

“We can't live alone in any society. But the best way to help a society or group, is to be the best individual in it that we can be.”

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

“Sometimes you have intuitive insight about how you think things are going to be, and you write that. Other times you fantasize completely, which has nothing to do with predicting the future.”

“Sandwich outdoors isn’t a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.”

“I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal.”

“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.”

“It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book... it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt.”

“A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.”

“Just write every day of your life. Read intensely.”

“It could reach up and grab the moon.”

“The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us - it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

“Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it.”

“To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start.”

“We are anthill men upon an anthill world.”

“Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.”

“You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet you're easy to forgive. You say you're seventeen?..How odd. How strange. And my wife thirty and yet you seem so much older at times. I can't get over it.”

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

“I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.”

“Surprise is where creativity comes in.”

“There are a lot of wonderful women writers who would be good influences on writers. You've got to spread yourself out and educate yourself with all kinds of stories.”

“The local TV news is the greatest danger in your life. It's all crap.”

“You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library everyday of your life.”

“Kerosene," he said, because the silence had lengthened, "is nothing but perfume to me.”

“Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.”

“To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must write dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.”

“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.”

“Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.”

“[He] was always here to offer cups of good clear Walden Pond, or shout down the deep well of Shakespeare and listen, with satisfaction, for echoes. Here the lion and the hartebeest lay together, here the jackass became a unicorn.”

“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do-and they don’t. They have prejudices.”

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

“But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority”

“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...”

“An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.”

“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught.”

“Everyone has a telephone. Whether they can afford it or not. It's one of those things that people have, regardless of their income.”