Ray Bradbury Way Quotations

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I am one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the 'guilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.

There is more than one way to burn a book.

The one sure way I can dishonor myself is by worrying about my reputation.

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.

How to feel your way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of your skull.

I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it's immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it.

I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?

Any carefully planned thing destroys the creativity. You can't think your way through a story; you have to live it. So, you don't build a story; you allow it to explode.

The purpose of fiction is not to nail you to the ground as facts do, but to take you to the edge of the cliff and kick you off so you build your wings on the way down.

We can't live alone in any society. But the best way to help a society or group, is to be the best individual in it that we can be.

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 don't like to go to theaters, because I don't like the way most people behave in theaters.

You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.