Ray Bradbury Quotes

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. ~ 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

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. ~ Ray Bradbury

Up in Illinois, we've forgotten what it's all about. I mean the dead, up in our town, tonight, heck, they're forgotten. Nobody goes to sit and talk to them. Boy, that's lonely. That's really sad. But here-- why, shucks. It's both happy and sad. It's all firecrackers and skeleton toys down here in the plaza and up in that graveyard now are all the Mexican dead folks with the families visiting and flowers and candles and singing and candy. I mean it's almost like Thanksgiving, huh? And everyone set down to dinner, but only half the people able to eat, but that's no mind, they're THERE. It's like holding hands at a séance with your friends, but some of the friends gone. ~ Ray Bradbury

In order to be creative, you don't have to be original. ~ Ray Bradbury

If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want. ~ Frederik Pohl

There is no cause for nostalgia save the good and life-enhancing nostalgia for the present. ~ Ray Bradbury

I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. ~ Ray Bradbury

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. ~ Ray Bradbury

Now this greatest tent staled out hot raw breaths of earth, confetti that was ancient when the canals of Venice were not yet staked, and wafts of pink cotton candy like tired feather boas. In rushing downfalls, the tent shed skin; grieved, soughed as flesh fell away until at last the tall museum timbers at the spine of the discarded monster dropped with three canon roars. ~ Ray Bradbury

Lone at night, when I was twelve years old, I looked at the planet Mars and I said, 'Take me home!' And the planet Mars took me home, and I never came back. So I've written every day in the last 75 years. I've never stopped writing. ~ Ray Bradbury

There must me something in books, things we can't imagine. ~ Ray Bradbury

The first light on the roof outside; very early morning. The leaves on all the trees tremble with a soft awakening to any breeze the dawn may offer. ~ Ray Bradbury

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. ~ Ray Bradbury

She wanted to get at the hate of them all, to pry at it and work at it until she found a little chink, and then pull out a pebble or a stone or a brick and then a part of the wall, and, once started, the whole edifice might roar down and be done away with. ~ Ray Bradbury

There is only one type of story in the world-your story. ~ Ray Bradbury

If you had your way you'd pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you'd leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you'd have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn't go crazy. Instead of that, why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son. ~ Ray Bradbury

He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a hot trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other ~ Ray Bradbury

But what is shape? Only a cup for the blazing soul that God provides us all. ~ Ray Bradbury

. . .don't face a problem, burn it. ~ Ray Bradbury

It is a wise writer who knows his own subconscious. ~ Ray Bradbury

Once you kill all of us, and you're alone, you'll die! The hate will die. That hate is what moves you, nothing else! That envy moves you. Nothing else! You'll die, inevitably. You're not immortal. You're not even alive, you're nothing but moving hate. ~ Ray Bradbury

The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle. ~ Karen Russell

I am a passionate, not an intellectual writer, which means my characters must plunge ahead of me to live the story ~ Ray Bradbury

Meet him in the air?" Tom snorted, "good grief, talk about horrible directions to nowhere. ~ Ray Bradbury

I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket. ~ Ray Bradbury

This summer night deep down under the stars was all the things you would ever feel or see or hear in your life, drowning you all at once. ~ Ray Bradbury

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. ~ Ray Bradbury

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. ~ Ray Bradbury

But, stop and think. What does the word 'witch' truly mean?" "Why - " said Tom, and was stymied. "Wits," said Moundshroud. "Intelligence. That's all it means. Knowledge. So any man, or woman, with half a brain and with inclinations toward learning had his wits about him, eh? And so, anyone too smart, who didn't watch out, was called - " "A witch!" said everyone. "And some of the smart ones, the ones with wits, pretended at magic, or dreamed themselves with ghosts and dead shufflers and ambling mummies. And if enemies dropped dead by coincidence, they took credit for it. They liked to believe they had power, but they had none, boys, none, sad and sorry, 'tis true. But ~ Ray Bradbury

The blows of his heart might jar him loose, crash him down, but he was glad to hear them, know himself alive. ~ Ray Bradbury

And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there. ~ Ray Bradbury

Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. ~ Ray Bradbury

No person ever died that had a family. ~ Ray Bradbury

So it was the hand that started it all ... His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms ... His hands were ravenous. ~ Ray 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

I miss that in the city you can walk outside your front door and there's people all around you. And they don't know a thing about you.You could be anyone. ~ Ray Bradbury

Today we haved touched Mars. There is life on Mars, and it us us-extensions of our eyes in all directions, extensions of our mind, extensions of our heart and soul have touched Mars today. That's the message to look for there: We are on Mars. We are the Martians! ~ Ray Bradbury

Burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. ~ Ray Bradbury

He slapped her face with amazing objectivity and repeated the question. ~ Ray 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

For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old OCtober and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. FOr these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. THe spider-web hears them, trembles--breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them. ~ Ray Bradbury

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? ~ Ray Bradbury

We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. ~ Ray Bradbury

Work. Don't Think. Relax. ~ 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

... bums on the outside, libraries inside. ~ Ray Bradbury

By the end of Barber's talk, this event she's celebrating sounds like a product of the imagination of some master of speculative fiction like Philip K. Dick or Ray Bradbury - a mad dystopia in which feminist dreams have led to a forest full of separate clearings in which more and more women keep to smaller and smaller groups for fear of encountering difference. ~ Bruce Bawer

Mars is empty now. Five hundred years from now, it'll be full of people. ~ Ray Bradbury

School busses ... Won't even give us a chance to be late for school ... Never be late again in all our lives. Think of that nightmare,Doug, just think it all over. ~ Ray Bradbury

As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

Boy,' said Ralph, squinched up, balled up, feet against chest, eyes tight. 'England is no place to be a sinner. ~ Ray Bradbury

He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.
But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years.
There would be no spring. ("The October Game") ~ Ray Bradbury

Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally "bright", did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. ~ Ray Bradbury

What a dreadful surprise. For everyone knows, is absolutely certain, that nothing will ever happen to me. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But lets not talk about em eh? By the time the consequences catch up to you its too late isn't it? ~ Ray Bradbury

One Without the other is nothing ~ Ray Bradbury

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

All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. ~ Ray Bradbury

Somehow, irresistibly, the prime thing was: nothing mattered. Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and it's quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp. ~ Ray Bradbury

We've let too much time go by. We've been busy with war instead of being busy with peace. And that's what space travel is all about. It's all about peace and exploration and wonder and beauty. ~ Ray Bradbury

Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! ~ Ray Bradbury

All of my writing is God-given. ~ Ray Bradbury

One time, as a child in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon... ~ Ray Bradbury

When I was in middle school, the librarian there was secretary for a couple of groups of professional writers. She introduced me to Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, and I became very friendly with them over a period of two years. Both of them were very generous with their time, guidance and advice. ~ Jonathan Maberry

Evil has only the power that we give it. ~ Ray Bradbury

Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else. ~ Ray Bradbury

You've got to love libraries. You've got to love books. You've got to love poetry. You've got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it. ~ Ray Bradbury

What will that mean to each of you? It will mean that those of you who might have lived to be seventy-one must die at seventy. Some of you who might have lived to be eighty-six must cough up your ghost at eighty-five. That's a great age. A year more or less doesn't sound like much. When the time comes, boys, you may regret. But, you will be able to say, this year I spent well, I gave for Pip, I made a loan of life for sweet Pipkin, the fairest apple that ever almost fell too early off the harvest tree. Some of you at forty-nine must cross life off at forty-eight. Some at fifty-five must lay them down to Forever's Sleep at fifty-four. Do you catch the whole thing intact now, boys? Do you add the figures? Is the arithmetic plain? A year! Who will bid three hundred and sixty-five entire days from out his own soul, to get old Pipkin back? Think, boys. Silence. Then, speak. ~ Ray Bradbury

The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool. ~ Ray Bradbury

The Wardens put on their own epic production of Fahrenheit 452," Bob said. "They spent about twenty years finding and destroying copies. ~ Jim Butcher

Faber sniffed the book. Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. ~ Ray Bradbury

The automobile is the most dangerous weapon in our society - cars kill more than wars do. ~ Ray Bradbury

A great thunderstorm of sound gushed from the walls. Music bombarded him at such an immense volume that his bones were almost shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. ~ Ray Bradbury

They'll fry you, bleach you, change you! Crack you, flake you away until you're nothing but a husband, a working man, the one with the money who pays so they can come sit in there devouring their evil chocalates! Do you think you could control them? ~ Ray Bradbury

Why live? Life was its own answer. ~ Ray Bradbury

When I was a young man, I didn't think about having a family. My wife and I were too poor to have babies. Then all of a sudden, one came along and scared the hell out of us because we had no money. Once the baby arrives, you make do somehow. You fall in love with the baby and life adjusts itself. You find you don't need as much money as you thought. When that happens, you can ask the questions that should have come before the baby. ~ Ray Bradbury

Was she conscious of her talent? Hardly. If asked about her cooking, Grandma would look down at her hands which some glorious instinct sent on journeys to be gloved in flour, or to plumb disencumbered turkeys, wrist-deep in search of their animal souls. Her gray eyes blinked from spectacles warped by forty years of oven blasts and blinded with strewing of pepper and sage, so she sometimes flung cornstarch over steaks, amazingly tender, succulent steaks! And sometimes dropped apricots into meat loaves, cross-pollinated meats, herbs, fruits, vegetables with no prejudice, no tolerance for recipe or formula, save that at the final moment of delivery, mouths watered, blood thundered in response. Her hands then, like the hands of Great-grandma before her, were Grandma's mystery, delight, and life. She looked at them in astonishment, but let them live their life in the way they must absolutely lead it. ~ Ray Bradbury

Fame and money are gifts given to us only after we have gifted the world with our best, our lonely, our individual truths. ~ 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

Whenever I am very happy or very sad or very embarrassed, I cram my mouth with sweets and litter the breezeway with discards.

Когда я очень счастлив, или очень огорчен, или смущен, я всегда набиваю рот сладостями и бросаю обертки где попало. ~ Ray Bradbury

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. ~ Ray Bradbury

It is a lie to write in such way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary groups in the intellectual gazettes. ~ Ray Bradbury

Everything is generated through your own will power. ~ Ray Bradbury

I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em. ~ Ray Bradbury

If Blake said that, said Father Brian, he never lived in Dublin. ~ Ray Bradbury

It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself. ~ Ray Bradbury

The man was cold as an albino frog. ~ Ray Bradbury

Her cheeks glowed with pink charcoals. ~ Ray Bradbury

Sometimes writers write about a world that does not yet exist. We do it for a hundred reasons. (Because it's good to look forward, not back. Because we need to illuminate a path we hope or we fear humanity will take. Because the world of the future seems more enticing or more interesting than the world of today. Because we need to warn you. To encourage. To examine. To imagine.) The reasons for writing about the day after tomorrow, and all the tomorrows that follow it, are as many and as varied as the people writing. ~ Ray Bradbury

You have to be very productive in order to become excellent. You have to go through a poor period and a mediocre period, and then you move into your excellent period. It may be very well be that some of you have done quite a bit of writing already. You maybe ready to move into your good period and your excellent period. But you shouldn't be surprised if it becomes a very long process. ~ Ray Bradbury

Most of my short stories are fantasy. ~ Ray Bradbury

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. ~ Ray Bradbury

Over the years, they had destroyed all of him, removing hands, arms, and legs and leaving him with substitutes as delicate and useless as chess pieces. And now they were tampering with something more intangible
the memory; they were trying to cut the wires which led back into another year. ~ Ray Bradbury

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him. ~ Ray Bradbury

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation. ~ Ray Bradbury

I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love. ~ Ray Bradbury

That's sad," said Montag, quietly,(referring to The Hound) "because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know. ~ Ray Bradbury

I don't like realism. We already know the real facts about li[fe], most of the basic facts. I'm not interested in repeating what we already know. We know about sex, about violence, about murder, about war. All these things, by the time we're 18, we're up to here. From there on we need interpreters. We need poets. We need philosophers. We need theologians, who take the same basic facts and work with them and help us make do with those facts. Facts alone are not enough. It's interpretation. ~ Ray Bradbury

Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft. ~ Ray Bradbury

Libraries are absolutely at the center of my life. Since I couldn't afford to go to college, I attended the library three or four days a week from the age of eighteen on, and graduated from the library when I was twenty-eight. ~ Ray Bradbury