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Ray Bradbury [1920-2012] American

Rank: 4
Writer, Author

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction author.
Widely known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 as well as his science fiction and horror story collections The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and I Sing the Body Electric, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th- and 21st-century American writers.

Imagination, Morning, Science, Chance, Education, Space, Amazing, Best, Business, Courage, Dreams, Experience, Friendship, Future, Good, Graduation, History, Intelligence, Knowledge, Men, Money, Politics, Power, Time, Travel, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.	Chance	101
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.	Politics	102
Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.	Courage	103
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.	Education, Money	104
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.		105
Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.		106
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.		107
We are anthill men upon an anthill world.	Men	108
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.	Amazing, Imagination	109
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.	Best, Experience, Science	110
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.		111
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.	Business, Friendship, Intelligence, Time	112
I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.	Future	113
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.	Morning	114
We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.		115
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.		116
If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.		117
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.	Good, Work	118
I love all of the arts. I love motion pictures. I love stage. I love theater.		119
A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.		120
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.		121
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.		122
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.		123
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.		124
I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.		125
I don't have a computer. A computer's a typewriter. I already have a typewriter.		126
The important thing is to be in love with something.		201
If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.		202
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?		203
The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.	Morning	204
Everything is generated through your own will power.	Power	205
Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that.		206
Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don't have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.	Imagination, Knowledge	207
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.	History	208
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.		209
I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.		210
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.	Morning	211
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.		212
Love is easy, and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you're in love.		213
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.	Science	214
I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.		215
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.		216
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.	Education	217
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.		218
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.		219
I'm not a serious person, and I don't like serious people.		220
I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.		221
You don't have to turn on the TV set. You don't have to work on the Internet. It's up to you.		222
I've been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.		223
I write screenplays in the middle of the night.		224
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.		225
If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.	Dreams	226
You fail only if you stop writing.		301
If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.		302
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.		303
Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.		304
I have fun with ideas; I play with them.		305
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.		306
It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness.		307
It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.		308
The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.		309
We've gotta reinvest in space travel. We should've never left the moon.	Space, Travel	310
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.	Chance	311
If an idea isn't exciting, you shouldn't do it.		312
Books are alive, you see. They're not dead, they're alive.		313
I don't control my writing - it controls me.		314
Burroughs is crap. Crap.		315
I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.		316
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.		317
We've got to dumb America up again.		318
All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.		319
All the women in my life have been librarians, English teachers and book sellers.		320
'Fahrenheit 451' postulates a lot of things I didn't want to have happen.		321
Most members of Congress are politicians. They're bores.		322
Touch a scientist and you touch a child.	Science	323
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.	Imagination	324
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.		325
When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.	Graduation	326
My business is to prevent the future.		401
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.		402
My goal is to entertain myself and others.		403
I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.		404
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.		405
I find it amusing that I'm on the Internet now, because I've criticized it, but mainly I've criticized it on the basis of, 'What are you going to do with it?'		406
Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.		407
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.		408
Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.		409
When you're older you want to learn from other people.		410
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.		411
Electronic books are junk.		412
The Internet is a big distraction.		413
I'm never going to go to Mars, but I've helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.	Space	414
Most of my short stories are fantasy.		415
You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn.		416
I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring.		417
The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.		418
We're all dreamers.		419
All of my writing is God-given.		420
I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.		421
If you're living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.		422
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.		423
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.		424
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.		425
There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.		426
If I'd found out that Norman Mailer liked me. I'd have killed myself.		501
Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.	Imagination	502
I never ask anyone else's opinion. They don't count.		503
I don't go around thinking I'm Ray Bradbury all the time.		504
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.		505
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.		506
If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.		507
Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, 'The Martian Chronicles.'		508
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.		509
Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.		510
I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.		511
Libraries raised me.		512
I don't believe in colleges and universities.		513
Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?		514
I felt a bit bookish, cut off from life.		515
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.		516
I think we're doing a dreadful job of educating.		517
Facts are not interesting to me.		518
I don't need to be vindicated, and I don't want attention.		519
In Hollywood, they think they know it all. You, as a writer, are essentially an outsider. Novelists and short-story writers, especially.		520
I don't do research. I never have.		521
If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That's what I've done.		522
Bo Derek is a really good friend of mine, and I'd like to spend more time with her.		523
I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money.		524
I got started as an actor when I was 12.		525
I'm not a futurist.		526
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.		601
My favorite writers have been those who've said things well.		602

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