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But We Do Need A Breather. 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. They’re Caesar’s Praetorian Guard, Whispering As The Parade Roars Down The Avenue, ‘remember, Caesar, Thou Art Mortal.’ Most Of Us Can’t Rush Around, Talk To Everyone, Know All The Cities Of The World, We Haven’t Time, Money Or That Many Friends. The Things You’re Looking For, Montag, Are In The World, But The Only Way The Average Chap Will Ever See Ninety-nine Per Cent Of Them Is In A Book.

-Ray Bradbury

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But We Do Need

Ray Bradbury

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But We Do Need A Breather. 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. They’re Caesar’s Praetorian Guard, Whispering As The Parade Roars Down The Avenue, ‘remember, Caesar, Thou Art Mortal.’ Most Of Us Can’t Rush Around, Talk To Everyone, Know All The Cities Of The World, We Haven’t Time, Money Or That Many Friends. The Things You’re Looking For, Montag, Are In The World, But The Only Way The Average Chap Will Ever See Ninety-nine Per Cent Of Them Is In A Book.

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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.

You're Either In Love With What You Do, Or You're Not In Love.

Melt All The Guns, I Thought, Break The Knives, Burn The Guillotines-and The Malicious Will Still Write Letters That Kill.

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.

Writing Is Supposed To Be Difficult, Agonizing, A Dreadful Exercise, A Terrible Occupation.

Not To Write, For Many Of Us, Is To Die. We Must Take Ares Each And Every Day, Perhaps Knowing That The Battle Cannot Be Entirely Won, But Fight We Must, If Only A Gentle Bout. The Smallest Effort To Win Means, At The End Of Each Day, A Sort Of Victory.

Don’t Think. Thinking Is The Enemy Of Creativity.

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.

You Either Have An Imaginative Mind Or You Don't. All Of My Writing Is God-given. I Don't Write My Stories - They Write Themselves.

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.

When The Wind Is Right, A Faint Odor Of Kerosene Is Exhaled From Senator Mccarthy.

We Earth Men Have A Talent For Ruining Big, Beautiful Things. The Only Reason We Didn't Set Up Hot-dog Stands In The Midst Of The Egyptian Temple Of Karnak Is Because It Was Out Of The Way And Served No Large Commercial Purpose.

...passing Swiftly On Toward Further Darknesses, But Moving Also Toward A New Sun.

Acting Without Knowing Takes You Right Off The Cliff.

Kill Two Birds With One Stone, Feed The Homeless To The Hungry.

I Don't Believe In Colleges And Universities.

I Do A First Draft As Passionately And As Quickly As I Can. I Believe A Story Is Valid Only When It's Immediate And Passionate, When It Dances Out Of Your Subconscious. If You Interfere In Any Way, You Destroy It.

I Think The Reason My Stories Have Been So Successful Is That I Have A Strong Sense Of Metaphor.

You Learn To Live With Your Crazy Enthusiasms Which Nobody Else Shares, And Then You Find A Few Other Nuts Like Yourself, And They're Your Friends For A Lifetime. That's What Friends Are, The People Who Share Your Crazy Outlook And Protect You From The World, Because Nobody Else Is Going To Give A Damn What You're Doing, So You Need A Few Other People Like Yourself.

I Don't Tell Anyone How To Write And No One Tells Me.

A Good Night Sleep, Or A Ten Minute Bawl, Or A Pint Of Chocolate Ice Cream, Or All Three Together, Is Good Medicine.

Chocolate Ice Cream

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.

You Take The Books, You Lie There In The Pools Of Light And You Drink Life. That Is How Intensely I Have Loved Libraries.

Do What You Love, Don't Do Anything Else.

Science Fiction Is A Great Way To Pretend You Are Writing About The Future When In Reality You Are Attacking The Recent Past And The Present. You Can Criticize Communists, Racists, Fascists Or Any Other Clear And Present Danger, And They Can't Imagine You Are Writing About Them.

I Don't See Myself As A Philosopher. That's Awfully Boring.

Science Fiction Is Really Sociological Studies Of The Future, Things That The Writer Believes Are Going To Happen By Putting Two And Two Together.

Life Is Like Underwear, Should Be Changed Twice A Day.

Kerosene," He Said, Because The Silence Had Lengthened, "is Nothing But Perfume To Me.

You're Peculiar, You're Aggravating, Yet You're Easy To Forgive. You Say You're Seventeen?..how Odd. How Strange. And My Wife Thirty And Yet You Seem So Much Older At Times. I Can't Get Over It.

It Was Only The Other Night Everything Was Fine And The Next Thing I Know Im Drowning. How Many Times Can A Man Go Down And Still Be Alive? I Can't Breathe

The Only Science Fiction I Have Written Is Fahrenheit 451. It's The Art Of The Possible. Science Fiction Is The Art Of The Possible. It Could Happen. It Has Happened.

We Travel For Romance, We Travel For Architecture, And We Travel To Be Lost.

I Have Total Recall. I Remember Being Born. I Remember Being In The Womb, I Remember Being Inside. Coming Out Was Great.

The Human Race Likes To Give Itself Airs. One Good Volcano Can Produce More Greenhouse Gases In A Year Than The Human Race Has In Its Entire History.

So In Sum, What Are We? We Are The Creatures That Know And Know Too Much. That Leaves Us With Such A Burden Again We Have A Choice, To Laugh Or Cry. No Other Animal Does Either. We Do, Depending On The Season And The Need.

My Job Is To Help You Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time.

Fahrenheit 451 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. Lord, There Were A Lot Of Lovely Books Once, Before We Let Them Go.

In That Film Love Story, There's A Line, "love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry." That's The Dumbest Thing I Ever Heard. Love Means Saying You're Sorry Every Day For Some Little Thing Or Other.

Jump, And You Will Find Out How To Unfold Your Wings As You Fall.

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.

My Parents Read The Comics To Me, And I Fell In Love With Comic Strips. I've Collected Them All Of My Life. I Have A Complete Collection Of All The "buck Rogers" Sunday Funnies And Daily Paper Strips, I Have All Of "prince Valiant" Put Away, All Of "tarzan," Which Appeared In The Sunday Funnies In 1932 Right On Up Through High School. So I've Learned A Lot From Reading Comics As A Child.

His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

Life Shoould Be Touched, Not Strangled. You've Got To Relax, Let It Happen At Times, And At Other Move Forward With It.

What Is The Subconscious To Every Other Man, In Its Creative Aspect Becomes, For Writers, The Muse.

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.

The Father Hesitated Only A Moment. He Felt The Vague Pain In His Chest. If I Run, He Thought, What Will Happen? Is Death Important? No. Everything That Happens Before Death Is What Counts. And We've Done Fine Tonight. Even Death Can't Spoil It.

I Believe In Creative Failing - To Contine To Write Poems That Fail And Fail And Fail Until A Day Comes When You've Got A Thousand Poems Behind You And You're Relaxed And You Finally Write A Good Poem.

No," Said A Voice, "the Only Thing Wrong On A Night Like That Is That There Is A World And You Must Come Back To It.

You've Been Put On The World To Love The Act Of Being Alive.

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.

All Silence Is. All Emptiness. And Now: The Dawn.

The Local Tv News Is The Greatest Danger In Your Life. It's All Crap.

If You Love People You Criticize Them, And If You Don't Love Them You Don't Criticize Them, You Let Them Go To Hell, Don't You? To Help Any Kind Of Friendship, Your Marriage, Your Children, You Criticize Because You Love.

I've Never Been In Charge Of My Stories, They've Always Been In Charge Of Me. As Each New One Has Called To Me, Ordering Me To Give It Voice And Form And Life, I've Followed The Advice I've Shared With Other Writers Over The Years: Jump Off The Cliff And Build Your Wings On The Way Down.

It's Rare You Get An Idea From A Dream. I Can't Really Recall A Story That Ever Worked Out That Way. I Think In 35 Years Of Writing, That I've Ever Had A Dream That Held Up. They're Much Too Dislocated

And Some Days, He Went On, Were Days Of Hearing Every Trump And Trill Of The Universe. Some Days Were Good For Tasting And Some For Touching. And Some Days Were Good For All The Senses At Once. This Day Now, He Nodded, Smelled As If A Great And Nameless Orchard Had Grown Up Overnight Beyond The Hills To Fill The Entire Visible Land With Its Warm Freshness. The Air Felt Like Rain, But There Were No Clouds.

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.

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.

If You Did Not Write Every Day, The Poisons Would Accumulate And You Would Begin To Die, Or Act Crazy Or Both-you Must Stay Drunk On Writing So Reality Cannot Destroy You.

Grandfather's Been Dead All These Years, But If You Lifted My Skull, By God, In The Convolutions Of My Brain You'd Find The Big Ridges Of His Thumbprint. He Touched Me. As I Said Earlier, He Was A Sculptor. 'i Hate A Roman Named Status Quo!' He Said To Me. 'stuff Your Eyes With Wonder,' He Said, '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.

Life Is About Trying Things To See If They Work.

Hello!" He Said Hello And Then Said, "what Are You Up To Now?" "i'm Still Crazy. The Rain Feels Good. I Love To Walk In It. "i Don't Think I'd Like That," He Said. "you Might If You Tried." "i Never Have." She Licked Her Lips. "rain Even Tastes Good." "what Do You Do, Go Around Trying Everything Once?" He Asked. "sometimes Twice.

The First Thing A Writer Should Be Is - Excited. He Should Be A Thing Of Fevers And Enthusiasms. Without Such Vigor, He Might As Well Be Out Picking Peaches Or Digging Ditches; God Knows It'd Be Better For His Health.

Don't Think About Things, Just Do Them; Don't Predict Them, Just Make Them.

(in Response To The Question: What Do You Think Of E-books And Amazon’s Kindle?) Those Aren’t Books. You Can’t Hold A Computer In Your Hand Like You Can A Book. A Computer Does Not Smell. There Are Two Perfumes To A Book. If A Book Is New, It Smells Great. If A Book Is Old, It Smells Even Better. It Smells Like Ancient Egypt. A Book Has Got To Smell. You Have To Hold It In Your Hands And Pray To It. You Put It In Your Pocket And You Walk With It. And It Stays With You Forever. But The Computer Doesn’t Do That For You. I’m Sorry.

If God Treats You Well By Teaching You A Disastrous Lesson, You Never Forget 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.

Really Knowing Is Good. Not Knowing, Or Refusing To Know, Is Bad, Or Amoral, At Least. You Can't Act If You Don't Know. Acting Without Knowing Takes You Right Off The Cliff.

There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book.

Have You Ever Watched The Jet Cars Race On The Boulevard?...i Sometimes Think Drivers Don’t Know What Grass Is, Or Flowers, Because They Never See Them Slowly...if You Showed A Driver A Green Blur, Oh Yes! He'd Say, That’s Grass! A Pink Blur! That’s A Rose Garden! White Blurs Are Houses. Brown Blurs Are Cows.

The Greek Philosophies Teach Us That We Are A Combination Of Dark And Light, Good And Evil, And Murderer And Savior, Hmm? And Until We Know This Completely About Ourselves We Cannot Love Well, And We Cannot Forgive Ourselves.

If You Can't Read And Write You Can't Think. Your Thoughts Are Dispersed If You Don't Know How To Read And Write. You've Got To Be Able To Look At Your Thoughts On Paper And Discover What A Fool You Were.

Everything Is Generated Through Your Own Will Power. You Don't Have To Do Anything You Don't Want To Do. This Is A Democracy. You Go Where You Want To Go And Do What You Want To Do.

Putting Out The Stars And Extinguishing The Sun.

There Is No Future For E-books, Because They Are Not Books. E-books Smell Like Burned Fuel.

Gardening Is The Handiest Excuse For Being A Philosopher. Nobody Guesses, Nobody Accuses, Nobody Knows, But There You Are, Plato In The Peonies, Socrates Force-growing His Own Hemlock. A Man Toting A Sack Of Blood Manure Across His Lawn Is Kin To Atlas Letting The World Spin Easy On His Shoulder.

And The Lesson Was This; Sit In The Sun, Head Down, Within A Prickly Vine, In A Flickery Light, Or Open Light, And The World Will Come To You. The Sky Will Come In Its Time, Bringing Rain, And The Earth Will Rise Through You, From Beneath, And Make You Rich And Make You Full.

God, How We Get Our Fingers In Each Other's Clay. That's Friendship, Each Playing The Potter To See What Shapes We Can Make Of Each Other.

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

Suddenly The Day Was Gone, Night Came Out From Under Each Tree And Spread.

The History Of Science Fiction Started In The Caves 20,000 Years Ago. The Ideas On The Walls Of The Cave Were Problems To Be Solved. It's Problem Solving. Primitive Scientific Knowledge, Primitive Dreams, Primitive Blueprinting: To Solve Problems.

We're A Free Society; We've Got Television. We Have Radio. We Have Newspapers. We Have The Videocassette, Which Is Coming Into Play. These Are New Freedoms.

Everything Of Mine Is Permeated With My Love Of Ideas-both Big And Small. It Doesn't Matter What It Is, As Long As It Grabs Me And Holds Me, Facinates Me. And Then I'll Run Out And Something About It... I Write For Fun.

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.

There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book. And The World Is Full Of People Running About With Lit Matches.

I Am Madness Maddened When It Comes To Books, Writers, And The Great Granary Silos Where Their Wits Are Stored.

So While Our Art Cannot, As We Wish It Could, Save Us From Wars, Privation, Envy, Greed, Old Age, Or Death, It Can Revitalize Us Amidst It All.

If Blake Said That, Said Father Brian, He Never Lived In Dublin.

You're Not Like The Others. I've Seen A Few; I Know. When I Talk, You Look At Me. When I Said Something About The Moon, You Looked At The Moon.

The Television Is 'real'. It Is Immediate, It Has Dimension. It Tells You What To Think And Blasts It In. It Must Be Right. It Seems So Right. It Rushes You On So Quickly To Its Own Conclusions Your Mind Hasn't Time To Protest, 'what Nonsense!'.

Too Many Of Us Have Lost The Passion And Emotion Of The Remarkable Things We-ve Done In Space. Let Us Not Tear Up The Future, But Rather Again Heed The Creative Metaphors That Render Space Travel A Religious Experience. When The Blast Of A Rocket Launch Slams You Against The Wall And All The Rust Is Shaken Off Your Body, You Will Hear The Great Shout Of The Universe And The Joyful Crying Of People Who Have Been Changed By What They-ve Seen.

That's Life For You," Said Macdunn. "someone Always Waiting For Someone Who Never Comes Home. Always Someone Loving Some Thing More Than That Thing Loves Them. And After A While You Want To Destroy Whatever That Thing Is, So It Can't Hurt You No More.

The Psychiatrist Wants To Know Why I Go Out And Hike Around In The Forests And Watch The Birds And Collect Butterflies. I'll Show You My Collection Some Day.good.they Want To Know What I Do With My Time. I Tell Them That Sometimes I Just Sit And Think. But I Won't Tell Them What. I've Got Them Running. And Sometimes, I Tell Them, I Like To Put My Head Back, Like This, And Let The Rain Fall In My Mouth. It Tastes Just Like Wine. Have You Ever Tried It?

We Cannot Tell The Precise Moment When Friendship Is Formed. As In Filling A Vessel Drop By Drop, There Is At Last A Drop Which Makes It Run Over; So In A Series Of Kindnesses There Is At Last One Which Makes The Heart Run Over.

(...) And Metaphors Like Cats Behind Your Smile, Each One Wound Up To Purr, Each One A Pride, Each One A Fine Gold Beast You've Hid Inside (...)

Most Of Us Can't Rush Around, Talk To Everyone, Know All The Cities Of The World, We Haven't Time, Money Or That Many Friends. The Things You're Looking For... Are In The World, But The Only Way The Average Chap Will Ever See Ninety-nine Per Cent Of Them Is In A Book.

I Don't Have A Computer. A Computer's A Typewriter. I Already Have A Typewriter.

We're All Fools," Said Clemens, "all The Time. It's Just We're A Different Kind Each Day. We Think, I'm Not A Fool Today. I've Learned My Lesson. I Was A Fool Yesterday But Not This Morning. Then Tomorrow We Find Out That, Yes, We Were A Fool Today Too. I Think The Only Way We Can Grow And Get On In This World Is To Accept The Fact We're Not Perfect And Live Accordingly.

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")

I Had Decided To Be A Magician Well Before I Decided To Be A Writer. I Was The Little Boy Who Would Get Up On-stage And Do Magic Wearing A Fake Mustache, Which Would Fall Off During The Performance. I'm Still Trying To Perform Those Tricks. Now I Do It With Writing.

I've Grown Up On A Diet Of Metaphors. If Young Writers Would Find Those Writers Who Can Give Them Metaphors By The Bushel And The Peck, Then They'll Become Better Writers - To Learn How To Capsualize Things And Present Them In Metaphorical Form.

They Crashed The Front Door And Grabbed At A Woman, Though She Was Not Running, She Was Not Trying To Escape. She Was Only Standing, Weaving From Side To Side, Her Eyes Fixed Upon A Nothingness In The Wall As If They Had Struck Her A Terrible Blow Upon The Head. Her Tongue Was Moving In Her Mouth, And Her Eyes Seemed To Be Trying To Remember Something, And Then They Remembered And Her Tongue Moved Again: "play The Man, Master Ridley; We Shall This Day Light Such A Candle, By God's Grace, In England, As I Trust Shall Never Be Put Out.

A Conglomerate Heap Of Trash, That's What I Am. But It Burns With A High Flame.

When I Finished [writing It], I Was Crying. I Knew At Long Last, After Ten Years Of Trying, I Had Written Something Good.

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.

I Believe In Libraries Because Most Students Don't Have Any Money.

A Book Is A Loaded Gun In The House Next Door...who Knows Who Might Be The Target Of The Well-read Man?

The Very First Experiments With Building Rockets And Firing Them Off Were Carried Out By Students At Cal Tech In 1937, '38 And '39. And Later These People Put Together These Jet Propulsion Labs In Pasadena And Wound Up Sending Aircraft And Spacecraft To The Moon. So It All Began Very Primitively With Love.

What Is It About Fire That's So Lovely? No Matter What Age We Are, What Draws Us To It?...the Thing Man Wanted To Invent, But Never Did...if You Let It Go On, It'd Burn Our Lifetimes Out. What Is Fire? It Is A Mystery. Scientists Give Us Gobbledygook About Friction And Molecules. But They Don't Really Know. Its Real Beauty Is That It Destroys Responsibility And Consequences.

Time Is So Strange And Life Is Twice As Strange. You Must Promise Me Not To Live To Be Too Old, William. It If Is At All Convenient, Die Before You're Fifty. It My Take A Bit Of Doing. But I Advise This Is Simply Because There Is No Telling When Another Helen Loomis Might Be Born. It Would Be Dreadful, Wouldn't It, If You Lived On To Be Very Very Old And Some Afternoon In 1999 Walked Down Main Street And Saw Me Standing There, Aged Twenty-one, And The Whole Thing Out Of Balance Again?

The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is Know Who You Are.

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.

I Take This Continent With Me Into The Grave.

Good To Evil Seems Evil

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.

The Answer To All Writing, To Any Career For That Matter, Is Love.

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.

Mars Is Empty Now. Five Hundred Years From Now, It'll Be Full Of People.

I Was Only Kicking Down The Christmas Tree To Get The Star On Top.

How Men Envy And Often Hate These Warm Clocks, These Wives, Who Know They Will Live Forever. So What Do We Do? We Men Turn Terribly Mean, Because We Can't Hold To The World Or Ourselves Or Anything. We Are Blind To Continuity, All Breaks Down, Falls, Melts, Stops, Rots, Or Runs Away. So, Since We Cannot Shape Time, Where Does That Leave Men? Sleepless. Staring.

With A Book Tucked In One Hand, And A Computer Shoved Under My Elbow, I Will March, Not Sidle, Shudder Or Quake, Into The Twenty-first Century.

You Can Write A Short Story In Two Hours. Two Hours A Day, You Have A Novel In A Year

Men Are Nuts. Young Men Are Crazy. We All Love Toys. I'm Toy Oriented. I Write About Toys. I've Got A Lot Of Toys. Hundreds Of Things. But Computers Are Toys, And Men Like To Mess Around With Smart Dumb Things. They Feel Creative.

Garrett," Said Stendahl, "do You Know Why I've Done This To You? Because You Burned Mr. Poe's Books Without Really Reading Them. You Took Other People's Advice That They Needed Burning. Otherwise You'd Have Realized What I Was Going To Do To You When We Came Down Here A Moment Ago. Ignorance Is Fatal, Mr. Garrett.

So There You Have It, A Lifetime Of First Smelling The Books, They All Smell Wonderful, Reading The Books, Loving The Books, And Remembering The Books.

Marriage Made People Old And Familiar, While Still Young.

It Doesn't Matter What You Do, He Said, 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. The Difference Between The Man Who Just Cuts Lawns And A Real Gardener Is In The Touching, He Said. The Lawn-cutter Might Just As Well Not Have Been There At All; The Gardener Will Be There A Lifetime.

Do Three Things Each Night Before You Go To Bed: Read A Poem, Read A Short Story, Read An Essay.

The Purpose Of Fiction Is Not To Nail You To The Ground As Facts Do, But To Take You To The Edge Of The Cliff And Kick You Off So You Build Your Wings On The Way Down.

I Never Consciously Place Symbolism In My Writing. That Would Be A Self-conscious Exercise And Self-consciousness Is Defeating To Any Creative Act. Better To Get The Subconscious To Do The Work For You, And Get Out Of The Way. The Best Symbolism Is Always Unsuspected And Natural. During A Lifetime, One Saves Up Information Which Collects Itself Around Centers In The Mind; These Automatically Become Symbols On A Subliminal Level And Need Only Be Summoned In The Heat Of Writing.

Remember, Montag, We're The Happiness Boys. We Stand Against The Small Tide Of Those Who Want To Make Everyone Unhappy With Conflicting Theory And Thought.

How Working For The Wrong Motives Poisons Our Creativity And Warps Our Ideas Of Success And Failure.

The Trouble With Jim Was He Looked At The World And Could Not Look Away. And When You Never Look Away All Your Life, By The Time You Are Thirteen You Have Done Twenty Years Taking In The Laundry Of The World.

What Church Could Compete With The Fireworks Of The Pure Soul?

When You Reach The Stars, Boy, Yes, And Live There Forever, All The Fears Will Go, And Death Himself Will Die.

Just Write Every Day Of Your Life. Read Intensely. Then See What Happens. Most Of My Friends Who Are Put On That Diet Have Very Pleasant Careers.

I Don't Decide. My Secret Self Decides. I Just Go With My Subconscious. If It Wants To Do A Poem, I Do A Poem, And If It Wants To Do A Play, I Do A Play. So I'm Not In Charge, I'm Not In Control.

All Flesh Is One: What Matter Scores; Or Color Of The Suit Or If The Helmet Glints With Blue Or Gold? All Is One Bold Achievement, All Is Fine Spring-found-again-in-autumn Day When Juices Run In Antelopes Along Our Blood, And Green Our Flag, Forever Green...

A Story Should Be Like A River, Flowing And Never Stopping, Your Readers Passengers On A Boat, Whirling Downstream Through Constantly Refreshing And Changing Scemery.

They Are So Confident That They Will Run On Forever. But They Won't Run On. They Don't Know That This Is All One Huge Big Blazing Meteor That Makes A Pretty Fire In Space, But That Some Day It'll Have To Hit.

You Let The Story Cool Off And Then, Instead Of Rewriting It, You Relive It.

Go Out And Make Your Own Speeches. People Need You. Go On Tv. It Can Be Done. After You Speak Up A Few Times, People Say, "hey, We Got A Crazy Man In The Community," And They'll Begin Talking To You.

Hollywood Was A Good Influence Because I Was Madly In Love With Films, And The Films Had A Direct Influence On Me.

Fame And Money Are Gifts Given To Us Only After We Have Gifted The World With Our Best, Our Lonely, Our Individual Truths.

The Library Is The Biggest Cracker Box Factory In The World. The More You Eat, The More You Want.

A Science Fiction Story Is Just An Attempt To Solve A Problem That Exists In The World, Sometimes A Moral Problem, Sometimes A Physical Or Social Or Theological Problem.

Fiction Stories

Looking Back Over A Lifetime, You See That Love Was The Answer To Everything.

We Are Anthill Men Upon An Anthill World.

Poetry Expands The Senses And Keeps Them In Prime Condition. It Keeps You Aware Of Your Nose, Your Eye, Your Ear, Your Tongue, Your Hand.

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.

Write A Short Story Every Week. It's Not Possible To Write 52 Bad Short Stories In A Row.

Collecting Facts Is Important. Knowledge Is Important. But If You Don't Have An Imagination To Use The Knowledge, Civilization Is Nowhere.

Day, After Day, After Glorious Day, I Was Falling In Love With Books.

Falling In Love

When I Graduated From High School I Couldn't Go To College, So I Went To The Library 3 Days A Week For 10 Years.

This Was All He Wanted Now. Some Signs That The Immense World Would Accept Him And Give Him The Long Time He Needed To Think All The Things That Must Be Thought.

I Don't Talk Things, Sir. I Talk The Meaning Of Things.

If You Dream The Proper Dreams, And Share The Myths With People, They Will Want To Grow Up To Be Like You.

Your Mind's Always Juggling, Isn't It?-mirrors, Torches, Plates.

Memory Is An Illusion, Nothing More. It Is A Fire That Needs Constant Tending.

It Takes Writing A Billion Bad Words Before You Get To The Good Ones.

Most Members Of Congress Are Politicians. They're Bores. They're Damn Boring. They Have No Imagination, And They Don't Know How To Imagine The Future.

The Huge Round Lunar Clock Was A Gristmill. Shake Down All The Grains Of Time—the Big Grains Of Centuries, And The Small Grains Of Years, And The Tiny Grains Of Hours And Minutes—and The Clock Pulverized Them, Slid Time Silently Out In All Directions In A Fine Pollen, Carried By Cold Winds To Blanket The Town Like Dust, Everywhere. Spores From That Clock Lodged In Your Flesh To Wrinkle It, To Grow Bones To Monstrous Size, To Burst Feet From Shoes Like Turnips. Oh, How That Great Machine…dispensed Time In Blowing Weathers.

The Zipper Displaces The Button And A Man Lacks Just That Much Time To Think While Dressing At Dawn, A Philosophical Hour, And Thus A Melancholy Hour.

We Are The Miracle Of Force And Matter Making Itself Over Into Imagination And Will.

He Says I'm A Regular Onion! I Keep Him Busy Peeling Away The Layers.

From This Outer Edge Of His Life, Looking Back, There Was Only One Remorse, And That Was Only That He Wished To Go On Living. Did All Dying People Feel This Way, As If They Had Never Lived? Did Life Seem That Short, Indeed, Over And Done Before You Took A Breath? Did It Seem This Abrupt And Impossible To Everyone, Or Only To Himself, Here, Now, With A Few Hours Left To Him For Thought And Deliberation?

Reality And Fiction Are Different In That Fiction Has To Make Sense.

...trees To Cool The Towns In The Boiling Summer, Trees To Hold Back The Winter Winds. There Were So Many Things A Tree Could Do: Add Color, Provide Shade, Drop Fruit, Or Become A Children's Playground, A Whole Sky Universe To Climb And Hang From; An Architecture Of Food And Pleasure, That Was A Tree. But Most Of All The Trees Would Distill An Icy Air For The Lungs, And A Gentle Rustling For The Ear When You Lay Nights In Your Snowy Bed And Were Gentled To Sleep By The Sound.

Living At Risk Is Jumping Off The Cliff And Building Your Wings On The Way Down.

The Great Fun In My Life Has Been Getting Up Every Morning And Rushing To The Typewriter Because Some New Idea Has Hit Me.

Evil Has Only The Power We Give It.

I Don't Know Anything Anymore

We Earth Men Have A Talent For Ruining Big, Beautiful Things.

The Average Tv Commercial Of Sixty Seconds Has One Hundred And Twenty Half-second Clips In It, Or One-third Of A Second. We Bombard People With Sensation. That Substitutes For Thinking.

I Prefer To See Myself As The Janus, The Two-faced God Who Is Half Pollyanna And Half Cassandra, Warning Of The Future And Perhaps Living Too Much In The Past - A Combination Of Both.

Learning To Let Go Should Be Learned Before Learning To Get. Life Should Be Touched, Not Strangled.

Learn To Let Go

There Are Too Many Of Us, He Thought. There Are Billions Of Us And That's Too Many. Nobody Knows Anyone. Strangers Come And Violate You. Strangers Come And Cut Your Heart Out. Strangers Come And Take Your Blood. Good God, Who Were Those Men? I Never Saw Them Before In My Life!

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.

Beware The Autumn People

You've Got To Be Able To Look At Your Thoughts On Paper And Discover What A Fool You Were.

No Person Ever Died That Had A Family.

There Are Certain Kinds Of People Who Write Science Fiction. I Think A Lot Of Us Married Late. A Lot Of Us Are Mama's Boys. I Lived At Home Until I Was 27. But Most Of The Writers I Know In Any Field, Especially Science Fiction, Grew Up Late. They're So Interested In Doing What They Do And In Their Science, They Don't Think About Other Things.

Since Everything Is But An Apparition, Having Nothing To Do With Good Or Bad, Acceptance Or Rejection, One May Well Burst Out In Laughter. Longchenpa Let's Stuff Our Eyes With Wonder, Let's Live As If We'd Drop Dead In Ten Seconds. Let's See The World. It's More Fantastic Than Any Dream Made Or Paid For In Factories.

I've Never Worked A Day In My Life. The Joy Of Writing Has Propelled Me From Day To Day And Year To Year. I Want You To Envy Me, My Joy. Get Out Of Here Tonight And Say: 'am I Being Joyful?' And If You've Got A Writer's Block, You Can Cure It This Evening By Stopping Whatever You're Writing And Doing Something Else. You Picked The Wrong Subject.

I'm Not Anyone, I'm Just Myself; Whatever I Am, I Am Something, And Now I'm Something You Can't Help.

Martian Chronicles

How Many Times Can A Man Go Down And Still Be Alive?

You Can't Learn To Write That Way - By Writing Directly For The Screen. Wait Until You're 30. But In The Meantime Write 200 Short Stories. You've Got To Learn How To Write!

I Feel I'm Doing What I Should've Done A Lifetime Ago. For A Little While I'm Not Afraid. Maybe It's Because I'm Doing The Right Thing At Last. Maybe It's Because I've Done A Rash Thing And Don't Want To Look The Coward To You.

You Must Stay Drunk On Writing So Reality Cannot Destroy You.

Zest. Gusto. How Rarely One Hears These Words Used. How Rarely Do We See People Living, Or For That Matter, Creating, By Them. Yet If I Were Asked To Name The Most Important Items In A Writer's Make-up, The Things That Shape His Material And Rush Him Along The Road He Wants To Go. I Would Only Warn Him To Look To His Zest, See To His Gusto.

There Are A Lot Of Wonderful Women Writers Who Would Be Good Influences On Writers. You've Got To Spread Yourself Out And Educate Yourself With All Kinds Of Stories.

I'm Not In Control Of My Muse. My Muse Does All The Work.

In Science Fiction, We Dream. In Order To Colonize In Space, To Rebuild Our Cities, Which Are So Far Out Of Whack, To Tackle Any Number Of Problems, We Must Imagine The Future, Including The New Technologies That Are Required.

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.

Who Has More Pockets Than A Magician? A Boy. Whose Pockets Contain *more* Than A Magicians? A Boy's.

Beer's Intellectual. What A Shame So Many Idiots Drink It.

I'll Be Damned If Death Wears My Sadness For Glad Rags.

The Magic Is Only In What Books Say, How They Stitched The Patches Of The Universe Together Into One Garment For Us.

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E. Stanley Jones

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