Inspirational Quotations

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

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012,) fully Ray Douglas Bradbury, was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, playwright, and poet. He is celebrated for his novels and original short stories that combine a poetic style, nostalgia for childhood and American small-town life, social criticism, and a consciousness of the perils of runaway technology.

Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Bradbury lived from 1934 in Los Angeles, where he educated himself at the public libraries. A devoted fan of sensational fiction and comics, he began contributing to pulp magazines, graduating to literary magazines and short story anthologies. He was one of the first authors to blend the concepts of science fiction with a sophisticated prose style.

Bradbury’s best-known novel is Fahrenheit 451 (1953; film adaptation, 1966.) Written on a rented typewriter in just nine days in the basement of a library at the University of California at Los Angeles, it is a disconcerting portrayal of a future where society has proscribed literature. The title comes from the temperature at which paper burns without being exposed to flame.

Bradbury’s novels include The Illustrated Man (1951,) Dandelion Wine (1957,) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962,) Death is a Lonely Business (1985,) A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990,) and Farewell Summer (2006.)

Bradbury is renowned in particular as a short-story writer; he created some of the best examples in the genre, among them ‘The Day It Rained Forever,’ ‘R is for Rocket,’ and those included in The Martian Chronicles (1950.) The Toynbee Convector (1988) was the last of his many collections of short stories.

Bradbury also wrote plays, poetry, children’s stories, screenplays, and volumes of essays, such as Journey to Far Metaphor (1994.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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
Topics: Libraries

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

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

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

If we listened to our intellect we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go in business because we’d be cynical: It’s gonna go wrong. Or She’s going to hurt me. Or, I’ve had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore … Well, that’s nonsense. You’re going to miss life. You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Time, Cause, Friends, Friend, Jump, Sin, Risk, Win, Risk-taking, Intellectuals, Business, Love, Intelligence, Friendship, Courage, Bravery

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

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
—Ray Bradbury
Topics: Reading, Books

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

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

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

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

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.
—Ray Bradbury

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: Thought, Thinking

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: Think, Good

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

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

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

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

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