Ray Bradbury

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

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.

The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven, if you still know everything, you're still seventeen.

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

I have my favorite cat who is my paperweight on my desk while I am writing.

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.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

Half of the fun of travel is the aesthetic of lostness.

Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.

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?

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.

I think we're doing a dreadful job of educating.

Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all and yet we don't take credit for it.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter, because some new idea has hit me.

It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.

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

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

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.

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.