Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.
Ray Bradbury
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them - one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
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.
Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.
I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
Touch a scientist and you touch a child.
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.
We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.
We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
You fail only if you stop writing.
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.
Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that.
Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?
A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.
I'm not a serious person, and I don't like serious people.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.
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.
Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.
If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.
It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.
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.
Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don't have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.
Books are alive, you see. They're not dead, they're alive.
Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I'm borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.
Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.
After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.
I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.
All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn't matter if you have a beautiful face or not.
My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god; I believe the earth is god and the universe is god. We're all god.
I've been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.
The Internet is a big distraction.
If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.
My business is to prevent the future.
It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness.
I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.
You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you're nuts, and you're not as popular with girls as you should be.
