Ray Bradbury Quotes (401 quotes, page 7)

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Ray Bradbury Quotes

““Oh,” said Brunilla, the cow-searcher. “A man with wings.”
That was how she took it. She was startled, yes, but she had never been hurt in her life, so she wasn’t afraid of anyone, and it was a fancy thing to see a winged man and she was proud to meet him.”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

Uncle Einar (1947)
The October Country (1955)

“Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off.”

Ray Bradbury

The Circus of Dr. Lao Introduction (1956)

“The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.”

Ray Bradbury

"And the Rock Cried Out" (1953), reprinted in The Day It Rained Forever (1959)

“Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C'mon, it's stupid.”

Ray Bradbury

Salon Magazine (29 August 2001)

“All the sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past.”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone (1954)
The October Country (1955)

“You should read in your own field only when you're young. When I was 8, 10, 12, 16, 25, I read science fiction. But then I went on to Alexander Pope and John Donne and Moliere to mix it up.”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)

“All silence is.
All emptiness.
And now:
The dawn.”

Ray Bradbury

"Emily Dickinson, where are you? Herman Melville called your name last night in his sleep!" in When Elephants Last In The Dooryard Bloomed : Celebrations For Almost Any Day In The Year (1973)

“Most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things.”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)

“The sun did not rise, it overflowed.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 211

“He knew that most machines are amoral, neither bad nor good. But by the way you built and shaped them you in turn shaped men, women, and children to be bad or good. A car, for instance, dead brute, unthinking, an unprogrammed bulk, is the greatest destroyer of souls in history. It makes boy-men greedy for power, destruction, and more destruction. It was never intended to do that. But that's how it turned out.”

Ray Bradbury book I Sing the Body Electric

I Sing the Body Electric! (1969)

“We all love toys. I'm toy oriented. I write about toys. I've got a lot of toys. Hundreds of things. But computers are toys, and men like to mess around with smart dumb things. They feel creative. … People are talking about the Internet as a creative tool for writers. I say, "B. S. Stay away from that. Stop talking to people around the world and get your work done."”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)

“As soon as I get an idea, I write a short story, or I start a novel, or I do a poem. So I have no need for a notebook. I do keep files of ideas and stories that didn’t quite work a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. I come back to them later and I look through the titles.”

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)

“The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.”

Ray Bradbury

Speech at Eureka College (1997)

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Variant: 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.
Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 81

“There they go, off to Venus, just for the ride, thinking that they will find a planet like a seer's crystal, in which to read a miraculous future. What they'll find, instead, is the somewhat shopworn image of themselves. Mars is a mirror, not a crystal.”

Ray Bradbury

"A Few Notes on The Martian Chronicles", in Rhodomagnetic Digest (May 1950)

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet."”

Ray Bradbury

The New York Times (2009)

“Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.”

Ray Bradbury

"All flesh is one: what matter scores?" in When Elephants Last In The Dooryard Bloomed : Celebrations For Almost Any Day In The Year (1973)

“There is no reason to write pornography when your own sex life is good. Why waste time writing about it?”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)

“When I was 16, I saw six people die horribly in an accident. I walked home holding on to walls and trees. It took me months to begin to function again. So I don't drive. But whether I drive or not is irrelevant. The automobile is the most dangerous weapon in our society — cars kill more than wars do. More than 50,000 people will die this year because of them and nobody seems to notice.”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)

“We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we’re not perfect and live accordingly.”

Ray Bradbury book The Illustrated Man

No Particular Night or Morning (1951)
The Illustrated Man (1951)

“The telephone rang like a spoiled brat.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Murderer (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

“I knew I was going into one of the arts: I was drawing, acting, and writing.”

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)

“On my seventieth birthday, when I reflected that so many of my friends were dead or dying, it hit me that it was high time I got more work done. Ever since that time, I have done the active, smart thing by increasing my productivity. I'm not on the rocks or shoals yet, but the last few years have been a devastation of illnesses and deaths of many good friends. [Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry was a loss that deeply grieved me.”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)

“If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), Chapter 38

““War!”
The thought stood in Sim’s brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn’t life short enough without fighting and killing?”

Ray Bradbury book R Is for Rocket

Frost and Fire (1946)
R Is for Rocket (1962)

“If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live a full and complete life.”

Ray Bradbury

Personal lessons from futurist Ray Bradbury on crying, escaping, laughing, by Mick Mortlock; Oregon Live (6 June 2012) http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/06/personal_lessons_from_futurist.html

“My job is to help you fall in love.”

Ray Bradbury

Speech at Brown University (1995)

“The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.”

Ray Bradbury book R Is for Rocket

Introduction
R Is for Rocket (1962)

“The problem of the novel is to stay truthful. The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours.”

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)

“Summertime, 1950, I recognized Isherwood browsing in a Santa Monica bookstore. My book had just come out, so I grabbed a copy off the shelf, signed it and gave it to him. His face fell and my heart sank, but two days later he called and said, "Do you know what you've done?" I asked, "What?" And he simply told me to read his review in the Times. His rave turned my life around; the book immediately made the best-seller lists and has been in print ever since.
He was very kind in introducing me to various people he thought I should know, like Aldous Huxley, who had been my literary hero since Brave New World came out.”

Ray Bradbury

On the chance meeting with Christopher Isherwood just after publication of The Martian Chronicles which led to fame and acclaim outside of SF fandom.
Playboy interview (1996)

“In touch! There’s a slimy phrase. Touch, hell. Gripped! Pawed, rather. Mauled and massaged and pounded by FM voices.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Murderer (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

“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.”

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)

“I’ve done a prideful thing, a thing more sinful than she ever done to me. I took the bottom out of her life.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Great Wide World Over There (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

“Montag, you're looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the "guilty," but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

“The monster cried out at the tower. The foghorn blew. The monster roared again. The foghorn blew. The monster opened its great toothed mouth, and the sound that came from it was the sound of the foghorn itself.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Foghorn, first published in The Saturday Evening Post (1951) with the title "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms"
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

“For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever 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. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles -- breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), Chapter 38

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”

Ray Bradbury

Actually a statement by Joseph Brodsky, as quoted in The Balancing Act : Mastering the Competing Demands of Leadership (1996) by Kerry Patterson, p. 437.
However, compare to the similar Bradbury quotes from 1993 (Seattle Times) and 2000 (Peoria Journal) above.
Misattributed

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

—And the Moon Be Still as Bright (1948)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)

“I took a Greyhound bus to New York and stayed at the YMCA, fifty cents a night. I took my stories around to a dozen publishers. Nobody wanted them. They said, We don’t publish stories. Nobody reads them. Don’t you have a novel?”

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)

“At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.”

Ray Bradbury

As quoted in "Sci-fi legend "Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'" by John Blake, CNN : Living (2 August 2010) http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-02/living/Bradbury_1_ray-bradbury-dandelion-wine-sam-weller?_s=PM:LIVING, p. 1

“Joy is the grace we say to God.”

Ray Bradbury

As quoted in "Sci-fi legend "Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'" by John Blake, CNN : Living (2 August 2010), p. 2

“I feel like I own all the kids in the world because, since I've never grown up myself, all my books are automatically for children. … It's mutual delight and love made manifest. For one thing, kids love me because I write stories that tell them about their capacity for evil. I'm one of the few writers who lets you cleanse yourself that way.”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)

“I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing.”

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)

“Trapped in the blood, athirst for air,
Christ, who once was employed as single Son of God
Now finds Himself among three billion on a billion
Brother sons, their arms thrown wide to grasp and hold
and walk them everywhere
Now weaving this, now weaving that in swoons…”

Ray Bradbury

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)