Ray Bradbury Quotes

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

I’m a firm believer in the power of curiosity and imagination.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him!

We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many internets. We have got to get ourselves back to the garden.

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 are all fools in love.

Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science. The whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.

I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.

There’s no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

We have our arts so we won’t die of truth.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.

Sometimes you have to look back, otherwise you will never know what you have lost in the way of forever.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

I believe in you. Now you must believe in yourself.

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.

Every time I tried to put the facts down on paper, I was able to see a little further into the future.

I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.

Sometimes life is a big dark parking lot.

I knew everything was going to be all right when I woke up.

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 ultimate of being successful is the luxury of giving yourself the time to do what you want to do.

My stories run up and bite me in the leg. I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

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.

Why is it that Americans are the only ones who can understand and express the epic quality of everyday life? Because we have room to develop ourselves and branch out.

I don’t try to predict the future. I just want to prevent it.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

I got into studying ghosts and ghouls and monsters and God knows what else when I was six to seven years old.

I spent my childhood in awe of machines. They became the source of my living.

There’s no reason to burn books if you don’t read them.

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book.

I often feel jealousy when I’m writing a story, because I’m afraid someone else is doing it better.

People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway.

Why is the world like a broken toy to them, and how soon will they tire of it?

We are all fools in love.

Half of your life is spent trying to solve the enormous problem of sex, the other half in finding food and shelter. We live in a jungle of so many problems.

They passed a book before they had books, and they passed a book when books were just a way to pass time. The important thing wasn’t reading, it was having the book.