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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. A Lot Of The People Whose Work They’ve Taught In The Schools For The Last Thirty Years, I Can’t Understand Why People Read Them And Why They Are Taught.

-Ray Bradbury

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You Can’t Learn To

Ray Bradbury

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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. A Lot Of The People Whose Work They’ve Taught In The Schools For The Last Thirty Years, I Can’t Understand Why People Read Them And Why They Are Taught.

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Love Is Easy, And I Love Writing.

For These Beings, Fall Is Ever The Normal Season, The Only Weather, There Be No Choice Beyond. Where Do They Come From? The Dust. Where Do They Go? The Grave. Does Blood Stir Their Veins? No: The Night Wind. What Ticks In Their Head? The Worm. What Speaks From Their Mouth? The Toad. What Sees From Their Eye? The Snake. What Hears With Their Ear? The Abyss Between The Stars. They Sift The Human Storm For Souls, Eat Flesh Of Reason, Fill Tombs With Sinners. They Frenzy Forth. Such Are The Autumn People.

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

Without Libraries What Have We? We Have No Past And No Future.

Life Should Be Touched, Not Strangled.

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.

I Don't Like To Go To Theaters, Because I Don't Like The Way Most People Behave In Theaters.

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

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

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.

You're Insane!" "i Won't Argue That Point.

Forget Them. Burn All, Burn Everything. Fire Is Bright And Fire Is Clean.

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

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

Digression Is The Soul Of Wit. Take The Philosophic Asides Away From Dante, Milton Or Hamlet's Father's Ghost And What Stays Is Dry Bones.

Any Carefully Planned Thing Destroys The Creativity. You Can't Think Your Way Through A Story; You Have To Live It. So, You Don't Build A Story; You Allow It To Explode.

The First Stories I Wrote When I Was 12 Were About Mars And Landing On Mars.

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.

I Came On The Old And Best Ways Of Writing Through Ignorance And Experiment And Was Startled When Truths Leaped Out Of Brushes Like Quail Before Gunshot.

His Flesh Took Paleness From His Bones.

You Feed Yourself. Make Sure You Have All The Information, Whether It's Aesthetic, Scientific, Mathematical, I Don't Care What It Is. Then You Walk Away From It And Let It Ferment. You Ignore It And Pretend You Don't Care. Next Thing You Know, The Answer Comes.

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.

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?

We Were Put Here As Witnesses To The Miracle Of Life. We See The Stars, And We Want Them. We Are Beholden To Give Back To The Universe. If We Make Landfall On Another Star System, We Become Immortal.

Evil Has Only The Power We Give It.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes You Just Have To Jump Out The Window And Grow Wings On The Way Down.

Do What You Love And Love What You Do. Don’t Do Anything For Money. Everything Should Be For Love.

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.

Why Would You Clone People When You Can Go To Bed With Them And Make A Baby? C'mon, It's Stupid.

Night Had Come On Like The Closing Of A Great But Gentle Eye.

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.

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.

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.

"oh, Ancient God, Whatever Your Name," Whispered Ahmed. "help This Lost Son Of A Good Father, This Evil Boy Who Meant No Harm But Slept In School, Ran Errands Slowly, Did Not Pray From His Heart, Ignored His Mother, And Did Not Hold His Family In Great Esteem. For All This I Know I Must Suffer. But Here In The Midst Of Silence, At The Desert's Heart, Where Even The Wind Knows Not My Name? Must I Die So Young? Am I To Be Forgotten Without Having Been?"

I'm Not Trying To Predict The Future. I'm Just Trying To 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.

Science And Religion Have To Go Hand In Hand With The Mystery, Because There's A Certain Point Beyond Which You Say, "there Are No Answers."

Every Story I've Written Was Written Because I Had To Write It. Writing Stories Is Like Breathing For Me; It Is My Life.

I Was Never Young. Whoever I Was Then Is Dead. That's More Of Your Quills. I Don't Want A Hide Full, Thanks. I Have Always Figured That You Die Each Day And And Each Day Is A Is A Box, You See, All Numbered And Neat; But Never Go Back And Lift The Lids, Because You Have Died A Couple Thousand Times In Your Life, And That's A Lot Of Corpses, Each Dead A Different Way, Each With A Worse Expression. Each Of Those Days Is A Different You, Somebody You Don't Know Or Understand Or Want To Understand.

And Some Day Well Remember So Much That Well Build The Biggest Goddam Steamshovel In History And Dig The Biggest Grave Of All Time And Shove War In And Cover It Up.

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 Was Always A Minority Afraid Of Something, And A Great Majority Afraid Of The Dark, Afraid Of The Future, Afraid Of The Past, Afraid Of The Present, Afraid Of Themselves And Shadows Of Themselves

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.

... Bums On The Outside, Libraries Inside.

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

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.

And They Were All, When Their Souls Grew Warm, Poets.

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

I Love All Of The Arts. I Love Motion Pictures. I Love Stage. I Love Theater.

Most Of My Short Stories Are Fantasy.

There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book.

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

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

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

What's The Point Of Having A Library Full Of Books You've Already Read?

Out Of The Nursery Into The College And Back Into The Nursery; There’s Your Intellectual Pattern For The Past Five Centuries Or More.

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

We Can't Live Alone In Any Society. But The Best Way To Help A Society Or Group, Is To Be The Best Individual In It That We Can Be.

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?

Sometimes You Have Intuitive Insight About How You Think Things Are Going To Be, And You Write That. Other Times You Fantasize Completely, Which Has Nothing To Do With Predicting The Future.

Halloween. Sly Does It. Tiptoe Catspaws. Slide And Creep. But Why? What For? How? Who? When! Where Did It All Begin? 'you Don't Know, Do You?' Asks Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud Climbing Out Under The Pile Of Leaves Under The Halloween Tree. 'you Don't Really Know!'

First, Find Out What Your Hero Wants, Then Just Follow Him.

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

Don't Talk About It; Write.

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

The World Doesn't Give A Damn About You Unless You Do Something. Those Are The Rules; I Didn't Make Them. If You Are Lazy, If You Don't Get The Work That You Love Done, The World Won't Care If You Die Tomorrow And Go Into The Grave And Are Gone And Forgotten Forever.

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

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.

There Was Her Face, Like A Summer Peach, Beautiful And Warm, And The Light Of The Candles Reflected In Her Dark Eyes. [he] Held His Breath. The Entire World Waited And Held Its Breath.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Ours Is A Culture And A Time Immensely Rich In Trash As It Is In Treasures.

It's Poor Judgment', Said Grandpa 'to Call Anything By A Name. We Don't Know What A Hobgoblin Or A Vampire Or A Troll Is. Could Be Lots Of Things. You Can't Heave Them Into Categories With Labels And Say They'll Act One Way Or Another. That'd Be Silly. They're People. People Who Do Things. Yes, That's The Way To Put It. People Who *do* Things.

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.

You Don't Have To Burn Books To Destroy A Culture. Just Get People To Stop Reading Them.

A Computer Does Not Smell ... If A Book Is New, It Smells Great. If A Book Is Old, It Smells Even Better… And It Stays With You Forever. But The Computer Doesn’t Do That For You. I’m Sorry.

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

I Shall Remain On Mars And Read A Book.

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.

Sometimes I Think I Understand Everything. Then I Regain Consciousness

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.

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.

A Stranger Is Shot In The Street, You Hardly Move To Help. But If, Half An Hour Before, You Spent Just Ten Minutes With The Fellow And Knew A Little About Him And His Family, You Might Just Jump In Front Of His Killer And Try To Stop It. 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.

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")

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?

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.

The Ability To "fantasize" Is The Ability To Survive. It's Wonderful To Speak About This Subject Because There Have Been So Many Wrong-headed People Dealing With It.... The So-called Realists Are Trying To Drive Us Insane, And I Refuse To Be Driven Insane.... We Survive By Fantasizing. Take That Away From Us And The Whole Damned Human Race Goes Down The Drain.

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

Learn To Let Go

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

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.

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

"that's Sad," Said Montag, Quietly, "because All We Put Into It Is Hunting And Finding And Killing. What A Shame If That's All It Can Ever Know."

Journalism Keeps You Planted In The Earth.

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.

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

In Order To Be Creative, You Don't Have To Be Original.

Those Who Don't Build Must Burn.

Fahrenheit 451 Book

You Don't Read In Your Own Field. You Read In That Field When You're Young, So That You Can Learn.

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.

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.

You Have To Learn To Take Rejection Not As An Indication Of Personal Failing But As A Wrong Address.

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

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

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.

Poverty Made A Sound Like A Wet Cough In The Shadows Of The Room.

Comic Strips Introduced Me To Metaphors. They Are Pure Metaphor, So You Learn How To Tell A Story With Symbols, Which Is A Very Valuable Thing To Learn. And I Learned That From Motion Pictures, Too, And From Poetry. Poetry Is Mainly Metaphor. If It Doesn't Have A Metaphor, It Doesn't Work.

And The Odd Think In Dad's Voice Was The Sound Truth Makes Being Said.

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

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.

Self-consciousness Is The Enemy Of All Art, Be It Acting, Writing, Painting, Or Living Itself, Which Is The Greatest Art Of All.

I Discovered Very Early On That If You Wanted A Thing, You Went For It - And You Got It. Most People Never Go Anywhere, Or Want Anything - So They Never Get Anything.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm Trying To Teach People Of All Ages To, Number One: How To Criticize, How To Offer Creative Analysis On Top Of That, How To Try To Build Things In A New Direction And How To Compliment People When The Thing Gets Done.

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

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

The Novel's Not Organized Like A Screenplay. If You Shot The Novel, You'd Have A Twelve-hour Movie.

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

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

I Have Two Rules In Life - To Hell With It, Whatever It Is, And Get Your Work Done.

He Glanced Back At The Wall. How Like A Mirror, Too, Her Face. Impossible; For How Many People Did You Know Who Reflected Your Own Light To You? People Were More Often--he Searched For A Simile, Found One In His Work--torches, Blazing Away Until They Whiffed Out. How Rarely Did Other People's Faces Take Of You And Throw Back To You Your Own Expression, Your Own Innermost Trembling Thought?

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

Far Away, In The Meadow, Shadows Flickered In The Mirror's Maze, As If Parts Of Someone's Life, Yet Unborn, Were Trapped There, Waiting To Be Lived.

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!

Last Night I Thought About All The Kerosene I've Used In The Past Ten Years. And I Thought About Books. And For The First Time I Realized That A Man Was Behind Each One Of The Books. A Man Had To Think Them Up. A Man Had To Take A Long Time To Put Them Down On Paper. And I'd Never Even Thought That Thought Before...it Took Some Man A Lifetime Maybe To Put Some Of His Thoughts Down, Looking Around At The World And Life, And Then I Come Along In Two Minutes And Boom! It's All Over.

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.

Remember, The Firemen Are Rarely Necessary. The Public Itself Stopped Reading Of Its Own Accord.

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.

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.

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 Think We're Doing A Dreadful Job Of Educating.

When I Started Writing Seriously, I Made The Major Discovery Of My Life - That I Am Right And Everybody Else Is Wrong If They Disagree With Me. What A Great Thing To Learn: Don't Listen To Anyone Else, And Always Go Your Own Way.

Remember: Plot Is No More Than Footprints Left In The Snow After Your Characters Have Run By On Their Way To Incredible Destinations. Plot Is Observed After The Fact Rather Than Before. It Cannot Precede Action. It Is The Chart That Remains When An Action Is Through. That Is All Plot Ever Should Be. It Is Human Desire Let Run, Running, And Reaching A Goal. It Cannot Be Mechanical. It Can Only Be Dynamic.

We're All Watching Each Other, So There's No Chance For Censorship. The Main Problem Is The Idiot Tv. If You Watch Local News, Your Head Will Turn To Mush.

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.

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.

We Must All Be Alike. Not Everyone Born Free And Equal, As The Constitution Says, But Everyone Made Equal. Each Man The Image Of Every Other; Then All Are Happy, For There Are No Mountains To Make Them Cower, To Judge Themselves Against.

Live As If You'd Drop Dead In Ten Seconds.

I Felt A Bit Bookish, Cut Off From Life.

When You're Older You Want To Learn From Other People.

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, Last Night. The Others Would Never Do That. The Others Would Walk Off And Leave Me Talking. Or Threaten Me. No One Has Time Any More For Anyone Else. You're One Of The Few Who Put Up With Me. That's Why I Think It's So Strange You're A Fireman, It Just Doesn't Seem Right For You, Somehow.

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

When You Write - Explode - Fly Apart - Disintegrate! Then Give Time Enough To Think, Cut, Rework, And Rewrite.

You Fail Only If You Stop Writing.

Inspiration To Write

There Is Only One Type Of Story In The World-your Story.

If Someone Sends You A Love Letter You've Got To Answer Back.

But Remember That The Captain Belongs To The Most Dangerous Enemy To Truth And Freedom, The Solid Unmoving Cattle Of The Majority

And What, You Ask, Does Writing Teach Us? First And Foremost, It Reminds Us That We Are Alive And That It Is Gift And A Privilege, Not A Right. We Must Earn Life Once It Has Been Awarded Us. Life Asks For Rewards Back Because It Has Favored Us With Animation. 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.

My Gosh, If You’re Going Away, We Got A Million Things To Talk About! All The Things We Would’ve Talked About Next Month, The Month After! Praying Mantises, Zeppelins, Acrobats, Sword Swallowers!

I Define Science Fiction As The Art Of The Possible. Fantasy Is The Art Of The Impossible. Science Fiction, Again, Is The History Of Ideas, And They're Always Ideas That Work Themselves Out And Become Real And Happen In The World. And Fantasy Comes Along And Says, 'we're Going To Break All The Laws Of Physics.' ... Most People Don't Realize It, But The Series Of Films Which Have Made More Money Than Any Other Series Of Films In The History Of The Universe Is The James Bond Series. They're All Science Fiction, Too - Romantic, Adventurous, Frivolous, Fantastic Science Fiction!

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

I've Always Known That The Quality Of Love Was The Mind, Even Though The Body Sometimes Refuses This Knowledge. The Body Lives For Itself. It Lives Only To Feed And Wait For The Night. It's Essentially Nocturnal. But What Of The Mind Which Is Born Of The Sun, William, And Must Spend Thousands Of Hours Of A Lifetime Awake And Aware? Can You Balance Off The Body, That Pitiful, Selfish Thing Of Night Against A Whole Lifetime Of Sun And Intellect? I Don't Know.

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

If You Have To Ask Yourself Whether Or Not You Love A Girl Or You Love A Boy, Forget It. You Don't.

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.

Men Read Science Fiction To Build The Future. Women Don't Need To Read It. They Are The Future.

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.

The Merry-go-round Was Running, Yes, But... It Was Running Backward. The Small Calliope Inside The Carousel Machinery Rattle-snapped Its Nervous-stallion Shivering Drums, Clashed Its Harvest-moon Cymbals, Toothed Its Castanets, And Throatily Choked And Sobbed Its Reeds, Whistles, And Baroque Flutes.

Ah, Art! Ah, Life! The Pendulum Swinging Back And Forth, From Complex To Simple, Again To Complex. From Romantic To Realistic, Back To Romantic.

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.

It Was A Great Place To Write A Novel About Book Burning, In The Library Basement.

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.

Those Women Like To See Their Tongues Dance.

Work Is The Only Answer. I Have Three Rules To Live By. One, Get Your Work Done. If That Doesn't Work, Shut Up And Drink Your Gin. And When All Else Fails, Run Like Hell!

Rules To Live By

All Education Is Self-discovery.

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.

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 Wonder How Many Men, Hiding Their Youngness, Rise As I Do, Saturday Mornings, Filled With The Hope That Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam And Daffy Duck Will Be There Waiting As Our One True Always And Forever Salvation?

I’ve Often Been Accused Of Being Too Emotional And Sentimental, But I Believe In Honest Sentiment, And The Need To Purge Ourselves At Certain Times, Which Is Ancient. Men Would Live At Least Five Or Six More Years And Not Have Ulcers If They Could Cry Better.

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.

When I Was A Young Writer If You Went To A Party And Told Somebody You Were A Science-fiction Writer You Would Be Insulted. They Would Call You Flash Gordon All Evening, Or Buck Rogers.

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.

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.

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

You Can Make Yourself Happy Or Miserable - It's The Same Amount Of Effort.

We Are All . . . Children Of This Universe. Not Just Earth, Or Mars, Or This System, But The Whole Grand Fireworks. And If We Are Interested In Mars At All, It Is Only Because We Wonder Over Our Past And Worry Terribly About Our Possible Future.

Can't You Recognize The Human In The Inhuman?

Martian Chronicles

Now That I Have You Thoroughly Confused, Let Me Pause To Hear Your Own Dismayed Cry.

A Witch Is Born Out Of The True Hungers Of Her Time,” She Said. “i Was Born Out Of New York. The Things That Are Most Wrong Here Summoned Me. ("drink Entire: Against The Madness Of Crowds")

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

Do You Ever Read Any Of The Books You Burn?" He Laughed. "that's Against The Law!" "oh. Of Course.

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.

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.

These Are All Novels, All About People That Never Existed, The People That Read Them It Makes Them Unhappy With Their Own Lives. Makes Them Want To Live In Other Ways They Can Never Really Be.

And What, You Ask, Does Writing Teach Us? First And Foremost, It Reminds Us That We Are Alive And That It Is A Gift And A Privilege, Not A Right.

You Grow Ravenous. You Run Fevers. You Know Exhilarations. You Can't Sleep At Night, Because Your Beast-creature Ideas Want Out And Turn You In Your Bed. It Is A Grand Way To Live.

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 Country Where It Is Always Turning Late In The Year. That Country Where The Hills Are Fog And The Rivers Are Mist; Where Noons Go Quickly, Dusks And Twilights Linger, And Midnights Stay. That Country Composed In The Main Of Cellars, Sub-cellars, Coal-bins, Closets, Attics, And Pantries Faced Away From The Sun. That Country Whose People Are Autumn People, Thinking Only Autumn Thoughts. Whose People Passing At Night On The Empty Walks Sound Like Rain.

Screenplays Are Not Writing. They're A Fake Form Of Writing. It's A Lot Of Dialogue And Very Little Atmosphere. Very Little Description. Very Little Character Work. It's Very Dangerous. You'll Never Learn To Write.

If You Have Moved Over Vast Territories And Dared To Love Silly Things, You Will Have Learned Even From The Most Primitive Items Collected And Put Aside In Your Life.

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