Talk:Ray Bradbury

Type of Author

Just a thought, rather than just science-fiction, maybe bradbury's author category should be expanded to include Romantic and Realist... he surely is both of these... --12.166.242.218 21:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Bradbury's powerful imagery makes his work a complex joy to read. Take for example Something Wicked This Way Comes: in chapter 42, he uses the word panoply to set up the whole chapter. Panoply is defined as a splendid or striking array, something that covers and protects, the complete weapons and armor of a warrior, and something made of science fiction that seems as if it is real. Bradbury shows how Mr. Dark uses his tattoos in every definition of the panoply. A whole chapter connected by one work, what a joy to read! Panoply can also describe Bradbury's writing style, especially the last definition. His method of writing takes pure science fiction and makes it seem as if it were completely real. Pure genious! James Otteman, April 7, 2006

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Ray Bradbury. --Antiquary 17:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

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

• At 7 a.m. all my voices start talking inside my head, and when it reaches a certain pitch I jump out and trap them before they're gone. Or I shower and then the voices talk. You solve problems not by thinking directly of them but allowing them to ferment in their own time.

• Bill Gates and his partners are flimflamming America. (1995)

• Bill, I don't do Windows.

• 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.

• If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build 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.

• 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.

• Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.

• [Television is] a really dreadful influence on all of us. Don't ever look at local television news again. It's all crap. There's no news, there's no information. It's negative, negative, negative. You look at that, and you think the world is coming to an end.

• The animated cartoon is just about the purest, least arguable, most invigorating art form invented since mankind did shadow shows with wriggling fingers, then trapped them in cave-wall graffiti 200 generations ago...

• The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance— the idea that anything is possible.

• The jails are full of one million non-readers. We can't let it happen again. If you allow another generation to grow up to be 12 years old... without the ability to read, write, and think, we're sunk. If they can't read, if they can't write, if they can't think, they become criminals. We've already lost two generations. Unless we teach reading intensely and completely in kindergarten and first grade, the whole civilization goes to hell.

• 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.

• There still are people who will come up to you and say: "Science Fiction? Ha! Why read that?!" The most direct, off-putting reply is: Science fiction is the most important fiction ever invented by writers. It saw a whole mob of troubles pouring toward us across the shoals of time and cried, "Head for the hills, the dam is broke!" But no one listened. Now, people have pricked up their ears, and opened their eyes.

• Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

• We are an impossibility in an impossible universe

• 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.

• When people ask me where I get my imagination, I simply lament, "God, here and there, makes madness a calling."

• 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.

• You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

• You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

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

Sourced Bradbury quotes

I've removed two quotes from the list above, as they are now on the page, one in slightly different form, with attributions. Markjoseph125 (talk) 03:15, 10 March 2023 (UTC)