Ray Bradbury

Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.

Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

I don't believe in colleges and universities.

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

Libraries raised me.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.

Electronic books are junk.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

There is too much government today. We've got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Most members of Congress are politicians. They're bores.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.

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.

Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.

In our time this 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.

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.

Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

My favorite writers have been those who've said things well.

All of my writing is God-given.

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

My business is to prevent the future.

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

I was only kicking down the Christmas tree to get the star on top.

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 need to be vindicated, and I don't want attention.

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you're in love.

Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always mans attitude when he has power.

If an idea isn't exciting, you shouldn't do it.

The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it.

We've gotta reinvest in space travel. We should've never left the moon.

In Hollywood, they think they know it all. You, as a writer, are essentially an outsider. Novelists and short-story writers, especially.

If you are going to describe the history of animation, you'd look at the early Disney work, then 'Bugs Bunny,' 'Road Runner' and other Warner Brothers theatrical productions. But when you got to 'Rocky and Bullwinkle,' you'd see they were unique: They assumed you had a brain in your head.

I have a big box of autographs. I took photographs of me and Marlene Dietrich, me and Ida Lupino. I took pictures of Myrna Loy and Joel McCrea in front of the studios. I loved Hollywood. I have 500 autographs and 500 photographs I took.

If you're embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn't include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

I don't go around thinking I'm Ray Bradbury all the time.

I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

When you're older you want to learn from other people.

You have got to jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.

No sound once made is ever truly lost. In electric clouds all are safely trapped and with a touch if we find them we can recapture those echoes of sad forgotten wars long summers and sweet autumns.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

I'm not a serious person, and I don't like serious people.

The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.

I felt a bit bookish, cut off from life.

I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

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.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

Everything is generated through your own will power.

I don't have a computer. A computer's a typewriter. I already have a typewriter.

Youve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

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

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

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.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn.

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

All the women in my life have been librarians, English teachers and book sellers.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, 'Do this, do that,' but it's my demon who provokes me.

Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that.

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

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

Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.

The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.

I used to take my short stories to girls' homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all creativity.

Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.

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.

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.

Sunsets are loved because they vanish.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

'Fahrenheit 451' postulates a lot of things I didn't want to have happen.

See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you're nuts, and you're not as popular with girls as you should be.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

First grade is very cheap. It's the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don't do it right.

Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

I've only written one science-fiction book: 'Fahrenheit 451.' That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That's what I've done.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

Facts are not interesting to me.

Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, 'The Martian Chronicles.'

The important thing is to be in love with something.

Look at the Chandra Levy case. It's become a Star Chamber. The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it.

I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.