Top 816 Quotes & Sayings by Ray Bradbury

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Ray Bradbury.
Last updated on October 10, 2024.
Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

The important thing is to be in love with something.
If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.
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.
A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt. — © Ray Bradbury
A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.
After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
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.
If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.
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.
I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.
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.
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
We've gotta reinvest in space travel. We should've never left the moon.
When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. — © Ray Bradbury
When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.
Electronic books are junk.
Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.
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.
My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god; I believe the earth is god and the universe is god. We're all god.
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.
I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.
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.
'Fahrenheit 451' postulates a lot of things I didn't want to have happen.
I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them - one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.
Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that.
Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.
Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Everything is generated through your own will power.
We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
Books are alive, you see. They're not dead, they're alive.
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
My business is to prevent the future.
Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don't have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.
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.
If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you. — © Ray Bradbury
If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.
It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness.
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.
I've been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.
If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.
Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.
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 have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.
You fail only if you stop writing. — © Ray Bradbury
You fail only if you stop writing.
Touch a scientist and you touch a child.
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.
The Internet is a big distraction.
I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.
It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.
Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.
We've gotta become the Martians. I'm a Martian - I tell you to become Martians. And we've gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.
I'm not a serious person, and I don't like serious people.
The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.
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