Bradbury's Quotes

Teachers say if you write a story you must never name what you're trying to write. Just do it. When it's over you'll know what you've done. — Ray Bradbury

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

It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all. — Ray Bradbury

Well, it's really no use our talking in the way we have been doing if the words we use mean something different to each of us ... and nothing. — Malcolm Bradbury

How rarely did other
people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost
trembling thought? — Ray Bradbury

I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature. — Sam Weller

The novel's not organized like a screenplay. If you shot the novel, you'd have a twelve-hour movie. — Ray Bradbury

Of course she's read it. Half of England has read it, which is why it's vulgar to quote it.' 'Half the world has read the Bible and we quote it. — Jennifer Bradbury

People try to force things. It's disastrous. Just leave your mind alone. Your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way. — Ray Bradbury

Most men jump at the chance to give up everything for nothing. There's nothing we're so slapstick with as our own immortal souls. — Ray Bradbury

It's bad to get up early, stand at your typewriter and work, then find it's nothing and take a bottle to bed. — Ray Bradbury

I never ask anyone else's opinion. They don't count. — Ray Bradbury

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 ... — Ray Bradbury

And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over. — Ray Bradbury

Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of all Creation. — Ray Bradbury

A conglomerate heap of trash, that's what I am. But it burns with a high flame. — Ray Bradbury

Libraries are the center of our lives. There's no use going to a university if you don't live at the library. — Ray Bradbury

The Internet is a big distraction. It's distracting, it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere. — Ray Bradbury

Because of what I loved at 7, I still get jobs in my 60's. Guess who got the job? Crazy Ray.
Ray Bradbury — Sherri Rabinowitz

Ray Bradbury's entire oeuvre exemplifies the crumbling of SCIENCE FICTION into the open interplay of science fiction, fantasy and horror. — Hal Duncan

I suppose it's an unconscious little stream of wit that flows quietly under everything I do or say. — Ray Bradbury

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

went to the Rock to hide my face And the Rock cried out, "No Hiding Place, There's no Hiding Place down here. — Ray Bradbury

Who has more pockets than a magician?
A boy.
Whose pockets contain *more* than a magicians?
A boy's. — Ray Bradbury

That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other — Ray Bradbury

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. — Ray Bradbury

Jump and let's build our wings on the way down — Ray Bradbury

The Government's supposed to be there for people when nobody else is, right? But it never works like that. — Brian K. Vaughan

I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. — Ray Bradbury

That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. — Ray Bradbury

We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. — Ray Bradbury

I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite. There! — Ray Bradbury

It doesn't matter if being so alive kills a man; it's better to have the quick fever every time. — Ray Bradbury

The critics are generally wrong, or they're fifteen, twenty years late. It's a great shame. They miss out on a lot. — Ray Bradbury

What's the point of having a library full of books you've already read? — Ray Bradbury

I don't want to change sides and just be told what to do. There's no reason to change if I do that. — Ray Bradbury

Madness, genius, originality - it's all the same thing; it's a breaking of our normal value structure and the substitution of another one. — Malcolm Bradbury

Congratulations.'
'For what? Breathing? That's a habit, not a virtue. — Ray Bradbury

When you grow up in science fiction you grow up in everything! It's the greatest and only field worth growing up in. It's the total field. — Ray Bradbury

Live in the library, for Christ's sake! Don't live on your goddamn computers and the internet and all that crap. Go to the library! — Ray Bradbury

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

it's just how you look at it, Charlie. Things are what you want them to be. — Ray Bradbury

That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you. — Ray Bradbury

It's a lonely life, but you're used to it now, aren't you? — Ray Bradbury

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. — Ray Bradbury

There were only the great diamonds and sapphires and emerald mists and velvet inks of space, with God's voice mingling among the crystal fires. — Ray Bradbury

God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other. — Ray Bradbury

Your mind's always juggling, isn't it?-mirrors, torches, plates. — Ray Bradbury

Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly. — Ray Bradbury

Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there's a certain point beyond which you say, "There are no answers." — Ray Bradbury

I'm the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It's just the opposite of love. — Ray Bradbury

One is congenitally a woman; one tries not to be, but it's a question of one's humanity. — Malcolm Bradbury

It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. — Ray Bradbury

But no man's a hero to himself. — Ray Bradbury

I love to write. It's all I do. — Ray Bradbury

Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C'mon, it's stupid. — Ray Bradbury

It's the Lord's space and the Lord's worlds in space, Father. We must not try to take our cathedrals with us, when all we need is an overnight case. — Ray Bradbury

But with the library, it's like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there's so much to look at and read. — Ray Bradbury

Him a first edition of Ray Bradbury's Dark Carnival and another who thinks I owe — Tim Kreider

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

It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. — Ray Bradbury

Whatever she is now she's better than she was," said Bedloe. "Being dead is better than being dull, being dead is better than not being aware. — Ray Bradbury

Out of the nursery into the college and back into the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more. — Ray Bradbury

Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power. — Ray Bradbury

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

The Animal does not question lif. It lives. It's very reason for living is life; it enjoys and relishes life. — Ray Bradbury

I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? — Ray Bradbury

I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring. — Ray Bradbury

That's all science fiction was ever about. Hating the way things are, wanting to make things different. — Ray Bradbury

After all, the function of a vacation is regenerative, not luxurious. It's to restore our equipment so that we can live our ordinary lives better. — Malcolm Bradbury

Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents. — Ray Bradbury

It's just ... It's just, if I didn't see these windows until today, what else did I miss? — Ray Bradbury

I have four daughters and eight grandchildren. My soul lives on in them. That's immortality. That's the only immortality I care about. — Ray Bradbury

Sure, it's money runs the world," Doone agreed, seated there. "But it is music that holds down the friction. — Ray Bradbury

The local TV news is the greatest danger in your life. It's all crap. — Ray Bradbury

There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them. — Ray Bradbury

There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work. — Ray Bradbury

Anything that's strange is no good to the average American. If it doesn't have Chicago plumbing, it's nonsense. — Ray Bradbury

It's always someone else's husband dies, they say — Ray Bradbury

It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness. — Ray Bradbury

We can't be good unless we know what bad is, and it's a shame we're working against time. — Ray Bradbury

We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen. — Ray Bradbury

Well, aren't you just saying it's better to be neurotic, sensitive, and miserable than unimaginative, adjusted and content? Is it really better? — Malcolm Bradbury

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

They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal. — Ray Bradbury

Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it. — Ray Bradbury

Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"
"Oh. Of course. — Ray Bradbury

A life's work should be based on love. — Ray Bradbury

It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid. — Ray Bradbury

Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why — Ray Bradbury

You don't have to turn on the TV set. You don't have to work on the Internet. It's up to you. — Ray Bradbury

You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead — Ray Bradbury

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

All of the good, weird stories I've written are based on things I've dredged out of my subconscious. That's the real stuff. Everything else is fake. — Ray Bradbury

Where strangers scanned each other's faces and found yesterday's sunrise instead of tomorrow's midnight. — Ray Bradbury

no man's a hero to himself. — Ray Bradbury

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

Don't listen," whispered Faber. "He's trying to confuse. He's slippery. Watch out. — Ray Bradbury

And the odd think in Dad's voice was the sound truth makes being said. — Ray Bradbury

Far away, in the meadow, shadows flickered in the Mirror's Maze, as if parts of someone's life, yet unborn, were trapped there, waiting to be lived. — Ray Bradbury