Ray Bradbury
My goal is to entertain myself and others.
It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness.
I've only written one science-fiction book: 'Fahrenheit 451.' That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.
The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.
I've been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.
We've got to dumb America up again.
I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.
Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?
Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, 'Do this, do that,' but it's my demon who provokes me.
All the women in my life have been librarians, English teachers and book sellers.
I love all of the arts. I love motion pictures. I love stage. I love theater.
The important thing is to be in love with something.
I have a big box of autographs. I took photographs of me and Marlene Dietrich, me and Ida Lupino. I took pictures of Myrna Loy and Joel McCrea in front of the studios. I loved Hollywood. I have 500 autographs and 500 photographs I took.
Electronic books are junk.
Most members of Congress are politicians. They're bores.
I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.
The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.
Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.
I don't need to be vindicated, and I don't want attention.
The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it.
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.
I don't control my writing - it controls me.
I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.
I don't do research. I never have.
If I'd found out that Norman Mailer liked me. I'd have killed myself.
I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.
My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I'm so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don't have the guts to take their names out of the book.
All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.
I don't believe in colleges and universities.
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. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don't want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who's the bore of all time.
When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn't exist. TV didn't exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.
My favorite writers have been those who've said things well.
First grade is very cheap. It's the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don't do it right.
I got started as an actor when I was 12.
I used to take my short stories to girls' homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?
The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.
When you're older you want to learn from other people.
If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That's what I've done.
Look at the Chandra Levy case. It's become a Star Chamber. The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it.
Libraries raised me.
I think we're doing a dreadful job of educating.
If an idea isn't exciting, you shouldn't do it.
If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.
Bo Derek is a really good friend of mine, and I'd like to spend more time with her.
Burroughs is crap. Crap.
We are anthill men upon an anthill world.
We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.