#ray bradbury quotes

[resmarted]

You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.

i believe the original quote starts off "you cannot think to do things. you simply must do things." but anyway this isn't even the one i was talking about. i can't find it but it's something like, people ask me all the time how to tell if they are a writer and the only way to tell is if you wake up in the morning and have to write. it's the first thing you want to do when you wake up and it's all you can think about. that's how you know if you're a writer. SOMETHING like that it is this idea paraphrased. there was a time i woke up and wrote fiction from morning til late at night and the only thing i looked forward to. then i started writing for money and it made me hate writing, then for a while i stopped writing altogether and at one point i fell deeply in love with the idea of a person and wrote about her in lengthy fiction every day for like three years straight (remember that era of this site/long reads tag?) and now i just dump random bits and pieces of myself before deleting them. it comes and goes in waves. i think at times when i am more practiced and the writing muscle is utilized more frequently it is certainly at the advantage of whatever piece i do crank out, but these days they are fewer and farther between with many unposted drafts and unfinished tales that will likely never see the light of day. i should get back into it. it doesn't ever really seem to cure the terrible loneliness but it sure does help to describe it and maybe alleviate it for others. thinking about how much you once lived and breathed an art form only to let it go by the wayside is truly devastating and very much one of those i was once young and had so much potential moments that can kill. but also i am still young and still have so much potential (maybe.) and it is perhaps in our most fragile moments of existing that the greatest forms of art are ever created. most artists now have a limited run of what they are capable of before falling off. your favorite song is probably by a band that has ten other albums you never heard. it's all so hit or miss and mostly miss after miss, a lot of silent work to no applause, so there is truly only room for those who really love it and do it for themselves. anyway i just wanted to say hi i am having some thoughts

[quotemadness]

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

[fairydrowning]

"It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason."

– Ray Bradbury

[soracities]

ray bradbury was right: "September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason" etc

[pasdetrois]

Ray Bradbury

[thoughtkick]

That’s the whole secret: To do things that excite you.

Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Prompt: The First Lines

Choose one of the first lines of these literary works and either create a new poem/story, or continue rewriting the story...

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they [electrocuted the Rosenbergs], and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless [Detroit day of January 1960]; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near [Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.] —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)

Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, [Colonel Aureliano Buendía] was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, 100 Years of Solitude (1967)

"Where's Papa going with that ax?" —E. B. White, Charlotte's Web (1952)

If this writing prompt inspires you in any way, please tag me, or send me a link. I would love to read your work!

More: The Last Lines (pt. 1) ⚜ (pt. 2) More: Writing Prompts

[theclassicsreader]

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 ... get sadder younger than anyone else in the world.

– Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

[palatinewolfsblog]

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury.

[intothestacks]

[edwardian-masquerade]

"And the best way to get your kicks is to dance through life like a child or a madman."

-Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

[the960writers]

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

[dabiconcordia]

"If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder." ― Ray Bradbury

[fairydrowning]

"It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason."

– Ray Bradbury

[soracities]

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 [ID in ALT]

[perfectquote]

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.

Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man