Ray Bradbury: Writing (page 2)

“Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.”

“Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!”

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.”

“Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that. On occasion? Sure. As relaxation? Great. But not full time— And a lot of people are doing that. And while they're doing that, I'll go ahead and write another novel.”

“Don't tell me how to write my novel. Don't tell me you've got a better ending for it. I have no time for that.”

“When I started writing seriously, I made the major discovery of my life — that I am right and everybody else is wrong if they disagree with me. What a great thing to learn: Don't listen to anyone else, and always go your own way.”

“I write fantasy. The only science fiction I have written is Fahrenheit 451. It's the art of the possible. Science fiction is the art of the possible. It could happen. It has happened.”

“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."”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I didn’t write Fahrenheit 451 about us. I wrote it about Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler. … I may not even talk about book banning if I don’t feel like it. I don’t prepare anything ahead. I have a dozen subjects to talk about because I write plays and poetry and essays, short stories and novels and screenplays and teleplays and operas. I’ll get lost, and the audience will have a wonderful time. And I’ll get a standing ovation, and they’ll go home.”

“I’m a magician who writes about ideas. I’m not a science-fiction writer. People who call me that are wrong. Most of what I write is fantasy or magic realism or plays about my Mexican-American background.”

“I write fantasy. The only science fiction I have written is Fahrenheit 451.”