Top 500 Ray Bradbury Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “I’m not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I’ll be around a long time. A thousand years from now, a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade.”

— Ray Bradbury

252. “We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things. The only reason we didn’t set up hot-dog stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because it was out of the way and served no large commercial purpose.”

— Ray Bradbury

253. “Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.”

— Ray Bradbury

254. “We’re all watching each other, so there’s no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.”

— Ray Bradbury

255. “They read the long afternoon through, while the cold November rain fell from the sky upon the quiet house. They sat in the hall because the parlor was so empty and gray-looking.”

— Ray Bradbury

256. “So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.”

— Ray Bradbury

257. “Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me, I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it’ll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.”

— Ray Bradbury

258. “War is a bad thing, but peace can be a living horror.”

— Ray Bradbury

259. “When a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry.”

— Ray Bradbury

260. “Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”

— Ray Bradbury

Featured in: Reading Quotes

261. “I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they’re going.”

— Ray Bradbury

262. “To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.”

— Ray Bradbury

Featured in: Reading Quotes

263. “Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don’t need to read it. They are the future.”

— Ray Bradbury

264. “It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the “parlour families” today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not.”

— Ray Bradbury

265. “Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.”

— Ray Bradbury

266. “You’ve got to love libraries. You’ve got to love books. You’ve got to love poetry. You’ve got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.”

— Ray Bradbury

Featured in: Book Quotes

267. “Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.”

— Ray Bradbury

268. “Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters.”

— Ray Bradbury

269. “Don’t let people interfere with you. Boot ’em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done. If you carry a short story over to the next day you may overnight intellectualize something about it and try to make it too fancy, try to please someone.”

— Ray Bradbury

270. “With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.”

— Ray Bradbury

271. “He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.”

— Ray Bradbury

272. “It’s always someone else’s husband dies, they say.”

— Ray Bradbury

273. “There is only one type of story in the world-your story.”

— Ray Bradbury

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

274. “We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe.”

— Ray Bradbury

275. “The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.”

— Ray Bradbury

276. “We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.”

— Ray Bradbury

277. “At the top of your lungs, shout and listen to the echoes. You must live life at the top of your voice!”

— Ray Bradbury

278. “We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

— Ray Bradbury

279. “That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”

— Ray Bradbury

280. “You let the story cool off and then, instead of rewriting it, you relive it.”

— Ray Bradbury

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

281. “I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.”

— Ray Bradbury

282. “I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn’t forget, I’m alive, I know I’m alive, I mustn’t forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.”

— Ray Bradbury

283. “I laugh until I weep And weep until I smile.”

— Ray Bradbury

284. “We’ve let too much time go by. We’ve been busy with war instead of being busy with peace. And that’s what space travel is all about. It’s all about peace and exploration and wonder and beauty.”

— Ray Bradbury

285. “Far away, in the meadow, shadows flickered in the Mirror’s Maze, as if parts of someone’s life, yet unborn, were trapped there, waiting to be lived.”

— Ray Bradbury

286. “Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.”

— Ray Bradbury

287. “I’m being ironic. Don’t interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it’s not polite. There!”

— Ray Bradbury

288. “This was all he wanted now. Some signs that the immense world would accept him and give him the long time he needed to think all the things that must be thought.”

— Ray Bradbury

289. “Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!”

— Ray Bradbury

Featured in: Book Quotes

290. “Like every beginner, I have thought you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.”

— Ray Bradbury

291. “Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words.”

— Ray Bradbury

292. “When I graduated from high school I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library 3 days a week for 10 years.”

— Ray Bradbury

Featured in: Reading Quotes

293. “If you’re reluctant to weep, you won’t live a full and complete life.”

— Ray Bradbury

294. “Writing can be described in two verbs: Throw up and clean up.”

— Ray Bradbury

295. “There was a damn silly bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man.”

— Ray Bradbury

296. “You’d type like hell. I spent $9.80 and in nine days I had Fahrenheit 451.”

— Ray Bradbury

297. “I believe the universe created us we are an audience for miracles. In that sense, I guess, I’m religious.”

— Ray Bradbury

298. “When you write – explode – fly apart – disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.”

— Ray Bradbury

299. “The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.”

— Ray Bradbury

300. “It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.”

— Ray Bradbury