You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“Bradbury Still Believes in Heat of ‘Fahrenheit 451,'” interview by Misha Berson, The Seattle Times (12 Mar 1993)
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Bradbury is often quoted as saying, "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." I can't find an actual citation for that, though this is a very similar sentiment. That actual quotation is also attributed to Joseph Brodsky.
Quotations by:
Bradbury, Ray
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.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“G. B. S. — Mark V”, I Sing the Body Electric: And Other Stories (1998)
The Muse was suddenly there for Dad.
The Truth lay easy in his mind.
The Subconscious lay saying its say, untouched, and flowing off his tongue.
As we must learn to do in our writing.
As we can learn from every man or woman or child around us when, touched and moved, they tell of something they loved or hated this day, yesterday, or some other day long past. At a given moment, the fuse, after sputtering wetly, flares and the fireworks begin.
Oh, it’s limping crude hard work for many, with language in their way. But I have heard farmers tell about their very first wheat crop on their first farm after moving from another state, and if it wasn’t Robert Frost talking, it was his cousin, five times removed. I have heard locomotive engineers talk about America in the tones of Thomas Wolfe who rode our country with his style as they ride it in their steel. I have heard mothers tell of the long night with their firstborn when they were afraid that they and the baby might die. And I have heard my grandmother speak of her first ball when she was seventeen. And they were all, when their souls grew warm, poets.Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“How to Keep and Feed a Muse,” The Writer (1961-07)
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Reprinted in Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (1990).
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 (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“No Particular Night or Morning” (1951)
If you can’t read and write you can’t think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don’t know how to read and write. You’ve got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“Ray Bradbury is on fire!”, interview with James Hibberd, Salon.com (29 Aug 2001)
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All through history in every culture we’ve had to make up mythology to explain death to ourselves and to explain life to ourselves.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“The Fantasy Makers: A Conversation with Ray Bradbury and Chuck Jones,” Interview by Mary Harrington Hall, Psychology Today (Apr 1968)
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if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is — excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it’d be better for his health.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“The Joy of Writing,” Zen & the Art of Writing and The Joy of Writing, Capra Chapbook No. 13 (1973)
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Reprinted in Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (1990).
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.
The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“The Secret Mind,” The Writer (1965-11)
(Source)
Reprinted in Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (1990).
Beware, Charlie, 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.
I wonder how many men, hiding their youngness, rise as I do, Saturday mornings, filled with the hope that Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck will be there waiting as our one true always and forever salvation?
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“Why Cartoons Are Forever”, Los Angeles Times (3 Dec 1989)
I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
(Attributed)
If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Fahrenheit 451, “Coda” Afterword (1979 ed.)
(Source)
Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Fahrenheit 451, “Coda” Afterword (1979 ed.)
(Source)
A play on Shakespeare's words.
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain-porridge unleavened literature licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Fahrenheit 451, “Coda” Afterword (1979 ed.)
(Source)
Bradbury wrote the coda to his dystopian 1953 novel about censorship when he found out that "offensive" phrases had been deleted from high school editions of the book.
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as 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 (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Fahrenheit 451, ch. 3 [Granger] (1953)
(Source)
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.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Introduction, “Drunk and in Charge of a Bicycle” (1980)
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.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Interview with Sam Geller, “The Art of Fiction, No. 203,” The Paris Review (Spring 2010)
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In that film Love Story, there’s a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you’re sorry every day for some little thing or other.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Interview with Sam Geller, “The Art of Fiction, No. 203,” The Paris Review (Spring 2010)
(Source)
Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present.
We need something larger than ourselves — that’s a real religious activity. That’s what space travel can be — relating ourselves to the universe.
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.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Speech, Brown University (23 Mar 1995)
In Brown Daily Herald (24 Mar 1995)
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 (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Speech, Eureka College (1997)