Ray Bradbury Quotes

351 Sourced Quotes

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
People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.

Ray Bradbury
Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.

Ray Bradbury
Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

Ray Bradbury
I don't understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. I'm interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.

Ray Bradbury
Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!

Ray Bradbury
Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.

Ray Bradbury
Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Ray Bradbury
I have never had a dry spell in my life because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

Ray Bradbury
Suddenly the day was gone, night came out from under each tree and spread.

Ray Bradbury
Who has more pockets than a magician? A boy. Whose pockets contain *more* than a magicians? A boy's.

Ray Bradbury
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
It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know Im drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can't breathe

Ray Bradbury
Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.

Ray Bradbury
I am not a science fiction writer. I am a fantasy writer. But the label got put on me and stuck.

Ray Bradbury
So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.

Ray Bradbury
He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.

Ray Bradbury
But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

Ray Bradbury
All flesh is one: what matter scores;
Or color of the suit
Or if the helmet glints with blue or gold?
All is one bold achievement,
All is fine spring-found-again-in-autumn day
When juices run in antelopes along our blood, And green our flag, forever green…

Ray Bradbury
A single face turned upward toward all Time
One flesh, one ecstasy, one peace.

Ray Bradbury
I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me.

Ray Bradbury
I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense.

Ray Bradbury
The train skimmed on softly, slithering, black pennants fluttering, black confetti lost on its own sick-sweet candy wind, down the hill, with the two boys pursuing, the air was so cold they ate ice cream with each breath.

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
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.

Ray Bradbury
Timothy looked at the deep ocean sky, trying to see Earth and the war and the ruined cities and the men killing each other since the day he was born. But he saw nothing. The war was as removed and far off as two flies battling to the death in the arch of a great high and silent cathedral. And just as senseless...
What are you looking at so hard, Dad?
I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace, and responsibility.
All that up there?
No. I didn't find it. It's not there any more. Maybe it'll never be there again. Maybe we fooled ourselves that it was ever there.

Ray Bradbury
I'm not afraid. When you live as long as I've lived, you lose that, too. I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I'd never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can't say I'm greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don't fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it.

Ray Bradbury
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
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
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