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...we're Allotted A Little Space On Earth And That We Survive In That Wilderness That Can Take Back What It Has Given, As Easily As Blowing Its Breath On Us Or Sending The Sea To Tell Us We Are Not So Big. When We Forget How Close The Wilderness Is In The Night, My Grandpa Said, Someday It Will Come In And Get Us, For We Will Have Forgotten How Terrible And Real It Can Be.

-Ray Bradbury

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...we're Allotted A Little

Ray Bradbury

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...we're Allotted A Little Space On Earth And That We Survive In That Wilderness That Can Take Back What It Has Given, As Easily As Blowing Its Breath On Us Or Sending The Sea To Tell Us We Are Not So Big. When We Forget How Close The Wilderness Is In The Night, My Grandpa Said, Someday It Will Come In And Get Us, For We Will Have Forgotten How Terrible And Real It Can Be.

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I Was Doing A Terrible Thing In Using The Very Books You Clung To, To Rebut You On Every Hand, On Every Point! What Traitors Books Can Be! You Think They're Backing You Up, And Then They Turn On You. Others Can Use Them, Too, And There You Are, Lost In The Middle Of The Moor, In A Great Welter Of Nouns And Verbs And Adjectives.

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.

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The Faster You Blurt, The More Swiftly You Write, The More Honest You Are.

Life Is About Trying Things To See If They Work.

(...) 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 (...)

Is It True, The World Works Hard And We Play? Is That Why We're Hated So Much?

Write 1000 Words A Day. That's Only About Four Pages, But Force Yourself To Do It. Put Your Finger Down Your Throat And Throw Up. That's What Writing's All About.

It's Lack That Gives Us Inspiration. It's Not Fullness.

I've Written About 2,000 Short Stories; I've Only Published 300 And I Feel I'm Still Learning. Any Man Who Keeps Working Is Not A Failure. He May Not Be A Great Writer, But If He Applies The Old Fashioned Virtues Of Hard, Constant Labor, He'll Eventually Make Some Kind Of Career For Himself As A Writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 Interview (doing The Math - That Means For Every Story He Sold, He Wrote Six "un-publishable" Ones. Keep Typing!)

He Stood Breathing, And The More He Breathed The Land In, The More He Was Filled Up With All The Details Of The Land. He Was Not Empty. There Was More Than Enough Here To Fill Him. There Would Always Be More Than Enough.

You Should Love Literature. You Should Live In The Library. Forget About Films.

My Goal Is To Entertain Myself And Others.

And Besides, I Like To Cry. After I Cry Hard It's Like It's Morning Again And I'm Starting The Day Over.

Thus Through Half-belief, We Are Often Doomed To Repeat That Very Past We Should Have Learned From.

The Ability To Fantasize Is The Ability To Survive, And The Ability To Fantasize Is The Ability To Grow

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.

Man Has Always Been Half-monster, Half-dreamer.

The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

Video Games Are A Waste Of Time For Men With Nothing Else To Do.

Get Rid Of Those Friends Of Yours Who Make Fun Of You And Don't Believe In You. And When You Leave Here Tonight, Go Home, Make A Phone Call And Fire Them. Anyone That Doesn't Believe In You And Your Future, To Hell With Them.

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

We're Going To Become The Martians When We Land There. When We Explore And Build Communities, We Become The Martians. That's A Wonderful Destiny For All Of Us.

Hold Summer In Your Hand, Pour Summer In A Glass, A Tiny Glass Of Course, The Smallest Tingling Sip, For Children; Change The Season In Your Veins By Raising Glass To Lip And Tilting Summer In.

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.

I Don't Think The Robots Are Taking Over. I Think The Men Who Play With Toys Have Taken Over. And If We Don't Take The Toys Out Of Their Hands, We're Fools.

We Need Not To Be Let Alone. We Need To Be Really Bothered Once In A While. How Long Is It Since You Were Really Bothered? About Something Important, About Something Real?

Television Is Very Dangerous. Because It Repeats And Repeats And Repeats Our Disasters, Instead Of Our Triumphs.

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

Falling In Love

...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.

I Have Something To Fight For And Live For; That Makes Me A Better Killer. I've Got What Amounts To A Religion , Now .

Martian Chronicles

That's The Wonderful Thing About Man; He Never Gets So Discouraged Or Disgusted That He Gives Up Doing It All Over Again, Because He Knows Very Well It Is Important And Worth The Doing.

You Will Have To Write And Put Away Or Burn A Lot Of Material Before You Are Comfortable In This Medium. You Might As Well Start Now And Get The Work Done. For I Believe That Eventually Quantity Will Make For Quality.

I'm Interested In Having Fun With Ideas, Throwing Them Up In The Air Like Confetti And Then Running Under Them.

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.

Libraries Are Absolutely At The Center Of My Life. Since I Couldn't Afford To Go To College, I Attended The Library Three Or Four Days A Week From The Age Of Eighteen On, And Graduated From The Library When I Was Twenty-eight.

We Meet On The Common Ground Of An Uncommon Age And Share Out Our Gifts Of Dark And Light, Good And Bad, Simple Joy And Not So Simple Sorrow.

Love Is The Answer To Everything. It's The Only Reason To Do Anything.

Creativity Is A Continual Surprise.

When I Graduated From High School, It Was During The Depression And We Had No Money.

I Wake Up In The Morning And I Lie In Bed, And It's The Time I Call "the Theater Of Morning." All These Thoughts Run Around In My Head, Between My Ears When I'm Waking Up. It's Not A Dream State, But It's Not Completely Awake Either. So All These Metaphors Run Around And Then I Pick One And I Get Out Of Bed And I Do It. I'm Very Lucky.

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

Mother: Why, Just Lying There, Jim, You Run So Fast. I Never Saw Anyone Move So Much, Just Sleeping. Promise Me, Jim. Wherever You Go And Come Back, Bring Lots Of Kids. Let Them Run Wild. Let Me Spoil Them, Some Day. Jim: I'm Never Going To Own Anything That Can Hurt Me.

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.

I Write All Of My Novels And Stories, As You Have Seen, In A Great Surge Of Delightful Passion. Only Recently, Glancing At The Novel, I Realized That Montag Is Named After A Paper Manufacturing Company. And Faber, Of Course, Is A Maker Of Pencils! What A Sly Thing My Subconscious Was, To Name Them Thus. And Not Tell Me!

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

The Real Fear Isn't Rejection, But That There Won't Be Enough Time In Your Life To Write All The Stories That You Have In You.

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Journalism Keeps You Planted In The Earth.

Are You Happy?" She [clarisse] Said. "am I What?" He [montag] Cried. But She Was Gone- Running In The Moonlight. Her Front Door Shut Gently.

Venice Was And Is Full Of Lost Places Where People Put Up For Sale The Last Worn Bits Of Their Souls, Hoping No One Will Buy.

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

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

You've Got To Jump Off Cliffs And Build Your Wings On The Way Down.

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I’m Alive. Thinking About It, Noticing It, Is New. You Do Things And Don’t Watch. Then All Of A Sudden You Look And See What You’re Doing And It’s The First Time, Really.

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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.

Books Are Flesh-and-blood Ideas And Cry Out, Silently, When Put To The Torch.

You Knew The Sweetness Of Now, Now, Tonight! Who Cares For Tomorrow, Tomorrow Is Nothing, Yesterday Is Over And Done, Tonight Live, Tonight!

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

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The Best Scientist Is Open To Experience And Begins With Romance - The Idea That Anything Is Possible.

The Only Good Writing Is Intuitive Writing. It Would Be A Big Bore If You Knew Where It Was Going. It Has To Be Exciting, Instantaneous And It Has To Be A Surprise. Then It All Comes Blurting Out And It’s Beautiful. I’ve Had A Sign By My Typewriter For 25 Years Now Which Reads, ‘don’t Think!’

The Trouble With A Lot Of People Who Try To Write Is They Intellectualize About It. That Comes After. The Intellect Is Given To Us By God To Test Things Once They’re Done, Not To Worry About Things Ahead Of Time.

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Write. Don't Think. Relax.

The Most Improbable Tales Can Be Made Believable, If Your Reader, Through His Sense, Feels Certain That He Stands At The Middle Of Events.

Your Intuition Knows What To Write, So Get Out Of The Way.

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.

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?

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

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'll Hold On To The World Tight Some Day. I've Got One Finger On It Now; That's A Beginning.

Where Would You Like To Go, What Would You Really Like To Do With Your Life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write A Book. Smoke Too Many Cigarettes. Fall Off A Cliff But Get Caught In A Tree Halfway Down. Get Shot At A Few Times In A Dark Alley On A Morrocan Midnight. Love A Beautiful Woman.

Once The Automobile Appeared You Could Have Predicted That It Would Destroy As Many People As It Did.

I Spent Three Days A Week For 10 Years Educating Myself In The Public Library, And It's Better Than College.

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.

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.

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

Good To Evil Seems Evil

We've Got To Reinvest In Space Travel. We Should Have Never Left The Moon.

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

In Sum, Do Not Insult Me With The Beheadings, Finger Choppings Or The Lung-deflations You Plan For My Works. I Need My Head To Shake Or Nod, My Hand To Wave Or Make Into A Fist, My Lungs To Shout Or Whisper With. I Will Not Go Gently Onto A Shelf, Degutted, To Become A Non-book. All You Umpires, Back To The Bleachers. Referees, Hit The Showers. It's My Game. I Pitch, I Hit, I Catch. I Run The Bases. At Sunset I've Won Or Lost. At Sunrise, I'm Out Again, Giving It The Old Try. And No One Can Help Me. Not Even You.

Thinking Little At All About Nothing In Particular.

But With The Library, It's Like Catnip, I Suppose: You Begin To Run In Circles Because There's So Much To Look At And Read.

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.

I Want Your Loves To Be Multiple. I Don't Want You To Be A Snob About Anything. Anything You Love, You Do It.

A Book Is A Loaded Gun.

He Knew What The Wind Was Doing To Them, Where It Was Taking Them, To All The Secret Places That Were Never So Secret Again In Life.

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.

Each Person Was Himself One Alone. One Oneness, A Unit In A Society, But Always Afraid, Always Alone. If I Should Scream, If I Should Call For Help, Would Anyone Hear Would It Even Matter?

The Internet Is A Big Distraction. It's Distracting, It's Meaningless; It's Not Real. It's In The Air Somewhere.

Monday Burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, Burn 'em To Ashes, Then Burn The Ashes. That's Our Official Slogan.

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.

I Am A Child Of The Poisonous Wind That Copulated With The East River On An Oil-slick, Garbage Infested Midnight. I Turn About On My Own Parentage. I Inoculate Against Those Very Biles That Brought Me To Light. I Am A Serum Born Of Venoms. I Am The Antibody Of All Time. I Am The Cure. You Do Of The City, Do You Not? Manhattan Is Your Punisher, Let Me Be You Shield.

Forgive, I Hope You Won't Be Upset, But When I Was A Boy I Used To Look Up And See You Behind Your Desk, So Near But Far Away, And, How Can I Say This, I Used To Think That You Were Mrs. God, And That The Library Was A Whole World, And That No Matter What Part Of The World Or What People Or Thing I Wanted To See And Read, You'd Find And Give It To Me.

The Stars Are Yours, If You Have The Head, The Hands, And The Heart For Them.

If You Hide Your Ignorance, No One Will Hit You And You'll Never Learn.

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

Heaven Is A House With Porch Lights.

When Your Dawn Theater Sounds To Clear Your Sinuses: Don't Delay. Jump. Those Voices May Be Gone Before You Hit The Shower To Align Your Wits. Speed Is Everything. The 90-mph Dash To Your Machine Is A Sure Cure For Life Rampant And Death Most Real. Make Haste To Live. Oh, God, Yes. Live. And Write. With Great Haste.

Friendship Is An Island That You Retreat To And You All Fall On The Floor And Laugh At All The Other Ninnies That Don't Have Enough Brains To Have Your Good Taste.

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

So Few Want To Be Rebels Anymore. And Out Of Those Few, Most, Like Myself, Scare Easily.

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.

What Should I Do?" "throw Up In Your Typewriter Every Morning." "yeah." "clean Up Every Noon.

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.

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.

In Order For A Thing To Be Horrible It Has To Suffer A Change You Can Recognize.

We Have Everything We Need To Be Happy But We Aren't Happy. Something Is Missing... It Is Not Books You Need, It's Some Of The Things That Are In Books. The Magic Is Only In What Books Say, How They Stitched The Patches Of The Universe Together Into One Garment For Us.

I Can Write Faster On A Typewriter Than You Can On A Computer. I Do 120 Words A Minute, And You Can't Do That On A Computer.

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!

Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.

..holding A Book But Reading The Empty Spaces.

I'm Being Ironic. Don't Interrupt A Man In The Midst Of Being Ironic, It's Not Polite. There!

Teachers Are To Inspire; Librarians Are To Fulfill.

Painting Fulfills A Need To Be Non-intellectual. There Are Times When We Have To Get Our Brains Out In Our Fingers.

I Have Spent My Life Going From Mania To Mania. Somehow It Has All Paid Off.

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.

Please, Please, Help Me Grow To Be Like Them, The Ones'll Soon Be Here, Who Never Grow Old, Can't Die, That's What They Say, Can't Die, No Matter What, Or Maybe They Died A Long Time Ago But Cecy Calls, And Mother And Father Call, And Grandmere Who Only Whispers, And Now They're Coming And I'm Nothing, Not Like Them Who Pass Through Walls And Live In Trees Or Live Underneath Until Seventeen-year Rains Flood Them Up And Out, And The Ones Who Run In Packs, Let Me Be The One! If They Live Forever, Why Not Me?

His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

It Won't Work,' Mr. Bentley Continued, Sipping His Tea. 'no Matter How Hard You Try To Be What You Once Were, You Can Only Be What You Are Here And Now. Time Hypnotizes. When You're Nine, You Think You've Always Been Nine Years Old And Will Always Be. When You're Thirty, It Seems You've Always Been Balanced There On That Bright Rim Of Middle Life. And Then When You Turn Seventy, You Are Always And Forever Seventy. You're In The Present, You're Trapped In A Young Now Or An Old Now, But There Is No Other Now To Be Seen.

People Who Take Books On Sex To Bed Become Frigid. You Get Self-conscious. You Can't Think A Story. You Can't Think, "i Shall Do A Story To Improve Mankind." Well, It's Nonsense. All The Great Stories, All The Really Worthwhile Plays, Are Emotional Experiences. If You Have To Ask Yourself Whether Or Not You Love A Girl Or You Love A Boy, Forget It. You Don't. A Story Is The Same Way. You Either Feel A Story And Need To Write It, Or You Better Not Write It.

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.

Don’t Worry About Things. Don’t Push. Just Do Your Work And You’ll Survive. The Important Thing Is To Have A Ball, To Be Joyful, To Be Loving And To Be Explosive. Out Of That Comes Everything And You Grow.

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

I Think The Sun Is A Flower, That Blooms For Just One Hour.

The Sun Burnt Every Day. It Burnt Time. The World Rushed In A Circle And Turned On Its Axis And Time Was Busy Burning The Years And The People Anyway, Without Any Help From Him. So If He Burnt Things With The Firemen, And The Sun Burnt Time, That Meant Everything Burnt!

Old Men Only Lie In Wait For People To Ask Them To Talk. Then They Rattle On Like A Rusty Elevator Wheezing Up A Shaft.

Plot Is No More Than Footprints Left In The Snow After Your Characters Have Run By On Their Way To Incredible Destinations.

Oh, What Strange Wonderful Clocks Women Are. They Nest In Time. They Make The Flesh That Holds Fast And Binds Eternity. They Live Inside The Gift, Know Power, Accept, And Need Not Mention It. Why Speak Of Time When You Are Time, And Shape The Universal Moments, As They Pass, Into Warmth And Action?

Not To Write, For Many Of Us, Is To Die.

I Would Not See Our Candle Blown Out In The Wind. It Is A Small Thing, This Dear Gift Of Life Handed Us Mysteriously Out Of Immensity. I Would Not Have That Gift Expire... If I Seem To Be Beating A Dead Horse Again And Again, I Must Protest: No! I Am Beating, Again And Again, Living Man To Keep Him Awake And Move His Limbs And Jump His Mind... What's The Use Of Looking At Mars Through A Telescope, Sitting On Panels, Writing Books, If It Isn't To Guarantee, Not Just The Survival Of Mankind, But Mankind Surviving Forever!

I Don't Like Realism. We Already Know The Real Facts About Li[fe], Most Of The Basic Facts. I'm Not Interested In Repeating What We Already Know. We Know About Sex, About Violence, About Murder, About War. All These Things, By The Time We're 18, We're Up To Here. From There On We Need Interpreters. We Need Poets. We Need Philosophers. We Need Theologians, Who Take The Same Basic Facts And Work With Them And Help Us Make Do With Those Facts. Facts Alone Are Not Enough. It's Interpretation.

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.

You're Afraid Of Making Mistakes. Don't Be. Mistakes Can Be Profited By. Man, When I Was Young I Shoved My Ignorance In People's Faces. They Beat Me With Sticks. By The Time I Was Forty My Blunt Instrument Had Been Honed To A Fine Cutting Point For Me. If You Hide Your Ignorance, No One Will Hit You And You'll Never Learn.

There's A Lot Of Crap Out There. Most Of The Science Fiction Films Alone Are Abominations, You Know. They're Mindless. So You Can't Learn From Those Kinds Of Films.

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

Impossible; For How Many People Did You Know Who Refracted Your Own Light To You?

Nobody Listens Anymore. I Can't Talk To The Walls Because They're Yelling At Me, I Can't Talk To My Wife; She Listens To The Walls. I Just Want Someone To Hear What I Have To Say. And Maybe If I Talk Long Enough It'll Make Sense. And I Want You To Teach Me To Understand What I Read.

We Need Not To Be Let Alone. We Need To Be Really Bothered Once In A While.

From The Outer Edge Of His Life, Looking Back, There Was Only One Remorse, And That Was Only That He Wished To Go On Living.

You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

Inspiration To Write

People Want To Be Happy, Isn't That Right? Haven't You Heard It All Your Life? I Want To Be Happy, People Say. Well, Aren't They? Don't We Keep Them Moving, Don't We Give Them Fun? That's All We Live For, Isn't It? For Pleasure, For Titillation? And You Must Admit Our Culture Provides Plenty Of These.

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.

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.

Sunsets Are Loved Because They Vanish. Flowers Are Loved Because They Go. The Dogs Of The Field And The Cats Of The Kitchen Are Loved Because Soon They Must Depart. These Are Not The Sole Reasons, But At The Heart Of Morning Welcomes And Afternoon Laughters Is The Promise Of Farewell. In The Gray Muzzle Of An Old Dog We See Goodbye. In The Tired Face Of An Old Friend We Read Long Journeys Beyond Returns.

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

The Moon Is A Good, Solid Base To Build A Space Travel Organization In The Community.

Those Women Like To See Their Tongues Dance.

I'm Not A Science-fiction Writer. I've Only Written One Book That's Science Fiction, And That's Fahrenheit 451. All The Others Are Fantasy.

Love What You Do And Do What You Love.

Time Was A Film Run Backward. Suns Fled And Ten Million Moons Fled After Them.

He Wore His Happiness Like A Mask And The Girl Had Run Off Across The Lawn With The Mask And There Was No Way Of Going To Knock On Her Door And Ask For It Back.

Insanity Is Relative. It Depends On Who Has Who Locked In What Cage.

Disbelief Is Catching. It Rubs Off On People.

People Ask Me To Predict The Future, When All I Want To Do Is Prevent It.

Tell Us Again, For We Forget, That Work Done Without Love Is Stillborn, Mindless, And Lost In The Very Hour Of Its Deliverance.

All Of The Good, Weird Stories I’ve Written Are Based On Things I’ve Dredged Out Of My Subconscious. That’s The Real Stuff. Everything Else Is Fake.

I Believe In Having Fun First, And Along The Way, If You Teach People, If You Influence People, Well And Good.

My Characters Talk To One Another, And When It Reaches A Certain Pitch Of Excitement I Jump Out Of Bed And Run And Trap Them Before They Are Gone.

I'm Scared Of Myself. I Think I'd Be A Bad Driver. I'm Scared Of Cars, Period. I've Had Too Many Friends Killed Now, And I've Seen Too Many People Killed In My Life When I Drove Across The Country When I Was 12. I'm Sure That Has A Lot To Do With It. If You See A Few Real Dead Bodies With Brains On The Pavement, It Does A Lot To Change Your Attitude. It Means You Can Get It Too. I've Had A Lot Of Relatives Killed. I've Had A Lot Of Dear Friends Killed. It's Stupid. The Whole Activity Is Stupid.

The First Thing You Learn In Life Is You're A Fool. The Last Thing You Learn In Life Is You're The Same Fool.

In Your Reading, Find Books To Improve Your Color Sense, Your Sense Of Shape And Size In The World.

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.

We Should Go To The Moon And Prepare A Base To Fire A Rocket Off To Mars And Then Go To Mars And Colonize Mars. Then When We Do That, We Will Live Forever.

And There, Row Upon Row, With The Soft Gleam Of Flowers Opened At Morning, With The Light Of This June Sun Glowing Through A Faint Skin Of Dust, Would Stand The Dandelion Wine. Peer Through It At The Wintry Day - The Snow Melted To Grass, The Trees Were Reinhabitated With Bird, Leaf, And Blossoms Like A Continent Of Butterflies Breathing On The Wind. And Peering Through, Color Sky From Iron To Blue. Hold Summer In Your Hand, Pour Summer In A Glass, A Tiny Glass Of Course, The Smallest Tingling Sip For Children; Change The Season In Your Veins By Raising Glass To Lip And Tilting Summer In

Marriage Made People Old And Familiar, While Still Young.

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.

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.

All Education Is Self-discovery.

[he] Was Always Here To Offer Cups Of Good Clear Walden Pond, Or Shout Down The Deep Well Of Shakespeare And Listen, With Satisfaction, For Echoes. Here The Lion And The Hartebeest Lay Together, Here The Jackass Became A Unicorn.

I Wish You A Wrestling Match With Your Creative Muse That Will Last A Lifetime. ... I Wish Craziness And Foolishness And Madness Upon You. May You Live With Hysteria, And Out Of It Make Fine Stories - Science Fiction Or Otherwise. Which Finally Means, May You Be In Love Every Day For The Next 20,000 Days. And Out Of That Love, Remake A World.

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.

But No Man's A Hero To Himself.

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?

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

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.

Ideas And Philosophies Change Just As Machines Do. Religions Changed Because Of The Birth Control Pill. Politics Changes Because Of The Hydrogen Bomb. All Because Of Science Fictional Inventions.

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

From Now On I Hope Always To Educate Myself As Best I Can. But Lacking This, In Future I Will Relaxedly Turn Back To My Secret Mind To See What It Has Observed When I Thought I Was Sitting This One Out. We Never Sit Anything Out.

Do Your Own Bit Of Saving, And If You Drown, At Least Die Knowing You Were Headed For Shore.

To Feed Your Muse, Then, You Should Always Have Been Hungry About Life Since You Were A Child. If Not, It Is A Little Late To Start.

Long Before You Knew What Death Was You Were Wishing It On Someone Else.

That's The Good Part Of Dying; When You've Nothing To Lose, You Run Any Risk You Want.

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

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