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I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.

Ray Bradbury

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Ray Bradbury
Age: 91 †
Born: 1920
Born: August 22
Died: 2012
Died: June 6
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Waukegan
Illinois
Ray Douglas Bradbury
Writing
Skins
Beginnings
Thus
Elders
Writers
Peers
Possibility
Discovering
Behinds
Beneath
Behind
Truths
Eye
Turning
Emulated
Away
Skin
Imitated

More quotes by Ray Bradbury

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And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over.
Ray Bradbury
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You should love literature. You should live in the library. Forget about films.
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You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.
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Why is it, he said, one time, at the subway entrance, I feel I've known you so many years? Because I like you, she said, and I don't want anything from you.
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So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.
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I don't decide. My secret self decides. I just go with my subconscious. If it wants to do a poem, I do a poem, and if it wants to do a play, I do a play. So I'm not in charge, I'm not in control.
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..holding a book but reading the empty spaces.
Ray Bradbury
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All of the good, weird stories I’ve written are based on things I’ve dredged out of my subconscious. That’s the real stuff. Everything else is fake.
Ray Bradbury
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The history of science fiction started in the caves 20,000 years ago. The ideas on the walls of the cave were problems to be solved. It's problem solving. Primitive scientific knowledge, primitive dreams, primitive blueprinting: to solve problems.
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Kill two birds with one stone, feed the homeless to the hungry.
Ray Bradbury
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And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.
Ray Bradbury
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The Martians were there - in the canal - reflected in the water.... The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water.
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The whole concept of higher education is negated unless the sole criterion used to determine if students qualify is the grades they score on standardized tests. Education is purely an issue of learning - we can no longer afford to have it polluted by damn politics. Leave pollution up to the politicians
Ray Bradbury
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I've grown up on a diet of metaphors. If young writers would find those writers who can give them metaphors by the bushel and the peck, then they'll become better writers - to learn how to capsualize things and present them in metaphorical form.
Ray Bradbury
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In my later years I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.
Ray Bradbury
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Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it.
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I have two rules in life - to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done.
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The trouble with a lot of people who try to write is they intellectualize about it. That comes after. The intellect is given to us by God to test things once they’re done, not to worry about things ahead of time.
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The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
Ray Bradbury
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Notoriety and a fat bank balance must come after everything else is finished and done.
Ray Bradbury