Ray Bradbury: Doing

Ray Bradbury was American writer. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Ray Bradbury: 802   quotes 17   likes

“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.”

Ray Bradbury
Thinking

“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.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Personality

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

Flowers , Bee

“Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)
Context: If NASA's budgeters could be convinced that there are riches on Mars, we would explode overnight to stand on the rim of the Martian abyss. We need space for reasons we have not as yet discovered, and I don't mean Tupperware. … NASA feels it has to justify everything it does in practical terms.
And Tupperware was one of the many practical products that came out of space travel. NASA feels it has got to flimflam you to get you to spend money on space. That's B. S. We don't need that. Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.

Life , Travel

“I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing.”

Ray Bradbury

Playboy interview (1996)
Context: I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing.

“That’s the whole secret: to do things that excite you.”

Ray Bradbury

The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: I write all the time. I get up every morning not knowing what I’m going to do. I usually have a perception around dawn when I wake up. I have what I call the theater of morning inside my head, all these voices talking to me. When they come up with a good metaphor, then I jump out of bed and trap them before they’re gone. That’s the whole secret: to do things that excite you.

Secret

“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it.”

Ray Bradbury

Beyond 1984: The People Machines (1979)
Context: 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. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.

People , Future

“It doesn't matter what you do… so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Way , Change

“That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.”

Ray Bradbury
Love , Life , Imagination

“Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.”

Ray Bradbury
Love , Books , Boy

“I’m ALIVE. Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don’t watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you’re doing and it’s the first time, really.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

Thinking , Time

“His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.”

Ray Bradbury Farewell Summer

Source: Farewell Summer

Books

“How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?”

Ray Bradbury

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe when it dies?”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Color , Country

“I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago.
For a little while I'm not afraid.
Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last.
Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Feeling

“Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Life , Hate , People , Books

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"
"Oh. Of course.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books , Law , Reading

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again…”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Cry