Inspirational Quotes by Ray Bradbury (American Science-Fiction Writer)

Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Travel

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.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Practice

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

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventhday Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor whosees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Censorship

It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: God

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Television

We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Creativity

First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Fear

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.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Feelings

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.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Miracles

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall
—Ray Bradbury

Chock them so … full of “facts” they feel stuffed, but absolutely “brilliant” with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Information

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Writing

Oh, Little Blue Engine, cried the dolls and toys. “Will you pull us over the mountain? Our engine has broken down and the boys and girls on the other side won’t have any toys to play with or good food to eat, unless you help us. Please, please, let us, Little Blue Engine”. “I’m not very big,” said the Little Blue Engine. “They use me only for switching trains in the yard. I have never been over the mountains”. … Puff, puff, chug, chug, went the Little Blue Engine. “I think I can—I think I can—I think can—I think can—I think I can—I think can—I think can—I think I can—I think can—I think can”.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Good, Think

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: The Future, Future

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

I love writing, it’s the center of my life. If you don’t love what you do, you’d better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don’t have a reason for living.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Authors & Writing

Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Writing

And now, these books. This. He touched PHYSIOGNOMONIE. The secrets of the individual’s character as found on his face. Were Jim and Will, then, featured all angelic, pure, half-innocent, peering up through the sidewalk at marching terror? Did the boys represent the ideal for your Woman, Man, or Child of Excellent Bearing, Color, Balance, and Summer Disposition?
Converserly…Charles Halloway turned a page…did the scurrying freaks, the Illustrated Marvel, bear the foreheads of the Irascible, the Cruel, the Covetous, the mouths of the Lewd and Untruthful? the teeth of the Crafty, the Unstable, the Audacious, the Vainglorious, and your Marvelous Beast?
No. The book slipped shut. If faces were judged, the freaks were no worse than many he’d been slipping from the liberty late nights in his long career.
There was only one thing sure.
Two lines of Shakespeare said it. He should write them in the middle of the clock of books, to fix the heart of his apprehension:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
So vague yet so immense.
He did not want to live with it.
Yet he knew that, during this night, unless he lived with it very well, he might have to live with it for all the rest of his life.
At the window he looked out and thought Jim, Will, are you coming? will you get here?
Waiting, his flesh took paleness from his bones.
—Ray Bradbury

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.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: America

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.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Adventure, Wonder

Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do.
—Ray Bradbury

Facts quite often, I fear to confess, like lawyers, put me to sleep at noon. Not theories, however. Theories are invigorating and tonic. Give me an ounce of fact and I will produce you a ton of theory by tea this afternoon. That is, after all, my job.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Facts

Life is “trying things to see if they work.”
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Life

You can make yourself happy or miserable – it’s the same amount of effort.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Happiness

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
—Ray Bradbury

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.
—Ray Bradbury

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Writing

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Dreams

My stories run up and bite me in the leg—I respond by writing them down – everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Authors & Writing

Sometimes you’ve got to jump off cliffs and grow wings on the way down.
—Ray Bradbury

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it’s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. …Science fiction is central to everything we’ve ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don’t know what they’re talking about.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Science Fiction

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Enjoyment

Richard Bach with this book does two things. He gives meFlight. He makes me Young. For both I am deeply grateful.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Authors & Writing

Without libraries what have we?. We have no past and no future.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Libraries

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Authors & Writing

A good night’s sleep, or a ten-minute brawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Medicine

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.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Thinking, Thought

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
Topics: Parenting

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
Topics: Libraries

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

• Robert A. Heinlein American Science Fiction Writer
• Ursula K. Le Guin Science-fiction writer
• Isaac Asimov American Novelist, Critic, Popular Scientist
• Philip K. Dick American Novelist
• Orson Scott Card American Author
• William S. Burroughs American Novelist
• Lois McMaster Bujold American Novelist
• Stephen King American Novelist
• John D. MacDonald American Novelist
• Brian Aldiss English Novelist