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.
— Ray Bradbury
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
You fail only if you stop writing.
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.
I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
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.
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.
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
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 are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Love is easy, and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you're in love.
Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.
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.
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.
Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.
If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.
Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
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.
If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.
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.
Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
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.
We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.
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.
Touch a scientist and you touch a child.
We are anthill men upon an anthill world.
Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.
