Ray Bradbury Quotes

351 Sourced Quotes

Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip, for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.

Ray Bradbury
It will only take a minute, said Uncle Einar's sweet wife.
I refuse, he said. And that takes but a second.

Ray Bradbury
Everything is generated through your own will power. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. This is a democracy. You go where you want to go and do what you want to do.

Ray Bradbury
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
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
The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.

Ray Bradbury
He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.

Ray Bradbury
Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion's den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can't get free of them and that's what kids like in school.

Ray Bradbury
Ten thousand times a million sons of sons move
Through one great and towering town
Wearing their wits, which means their laughter,
As their crown. Set free upon the earth
By simple gifts of knowing how mere mirth can cut the bonds
And pull the blood spikes out;
Their conversation shouts of "Fool!"

Ray Bradbury
Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through.

Ray Bradbury
Stuff your eyes with wonder... live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Ray Bradbury
Theories are invigorating and tonic. Give me an ounce of fact and I will produce you a ton of theory by tea this afternoon.

Ray Bradbury
But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority

Ray Bradbury
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.

Ray Bradbury
Do you ever wonder if—well, if there are people living on the third planet?' 'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.

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

Ray Bradbury
You knew the sweetness of now, now, TONIGHT! who cares for tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, yesterday is over and done, tonight live, tonight!

Ray Bradbury
Nikos Kazantzakis says, Live forever. That's his social obligation. The Saviors of God celebrates life in the world. Any great work does that for you. All of Dickens says live life at the top of your energy.

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

Ray Bradbury
That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.

Ray Bradbury
I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.

Ray Bradbury
More murders are committed at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature. Over one hundred, it's too hot to move. Under ninety, cool enough to survive. But right at ninety-two degrees lies the apex of irritability, everything is itches and hair and sweat and cooked pork. The brain becomes a rat rushing around a red-hot maze. The least thing, a word, a look, a sound, the drop of a hair and—irritable murder.

Ray Bradbury
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.

Ray Bradbury
Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until—bang!

Ray Bradbury
THE OCTOBER COUNTRY …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…

Ray Bradbury