“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.”
— Ray Bradbury
June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past.
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
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.
—Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury’s Personally Owned Art by James Bingham, Illustrating His Short Story ”The Fog Horn”
“So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”
— Ray Bradbury, “Zen in the Art of Writing”
Ray Bradbury (1929-2012) - It Came From Outer Space, 1970
I read that a few years ago and it was WILD. I only remember picking it up because it was mentioned in an episode of Criminal Minds and it sounded crazy haha
It really is! I find a lot of Ray Bradbury stories completely out there, ESPECIALLY considering how old they are!
And obligatory favourite quotes, and they are all related to death, because of course, Ray 💀💀💀
Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.
Oh, death in space was most humorous.
And now the great loose brain was disintegrating. The components of the brain which had worked so beautifully and efficiently in the skull case of the rocket ship firing through space were dying one by one; the meaning of their life together was falling apart. And as a body dies when the brain ceases functioning, so the spirit of the ship and their long time together and what they meant to one another was dying.
“So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”
— Ray Bradbury, “Zen in the Art of Writing”
“The October Country…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…” -Ray Bradbury
West magazine cover, inside is the first story from Bradbury's martian chronicles in Bande Dessines /comic book form
I love bradburys writing, he's a master of gothic, by turns movingly compassionate and truly frightening