Ray Bradbury Quotes

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.

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

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

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

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.

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 think we’re doing a dreadful job of educating.

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

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

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

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.

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.

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents‘ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing ‚Amazing Stories,‘ with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

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

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

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

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.

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

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

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

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.

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.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

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

Facts are not interesting to me.

Everything is generated through your own will power.

The important thing is to be in love with something.

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.

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

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

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.

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

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 have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

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

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

I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

I’ve been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.

I don’t do research. I never have.

If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me. I’d have killed myself.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

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 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.

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

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

Bo Derek is a really good friend of mine, and I’d like to spend more time with her.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

I don’t believe in colleges and universities.

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.

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