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"I memorized all of "John Carter and "Tarzan, and sat on my grandparents' front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, "Take me home! I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities."
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"Reality is not enough for us, that's why we have invented art to create different realities!"

"Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere."

"The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed."

"Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up. As we move toward our desired destination we chart the journey, creating a map. We need a map to guide us on our journey to love--starting with the place where we know what we mean when we speak of love."

"If you had stars inside your brain cells, you'd probably understand what I am talking about."

"The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity."

"Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel."

"What if dragons breathed bubbles and purred when they cuddled and giggled at chivalrous knights for their troubles?What if dragons felt soft, having scales made of cloth,and they moved rather slow like a brown-throated sloth?What if dragons were shyand did easily crywhen confronted by characters callous and sly?What if dragons did goodbut were misunderstoodso men mercilessly slew the beasts right where they stood?What if dragons aren't missedbecause there is no listof extinct types of quarry that now don't exist?"

"Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time."

"The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope."
Explore more quotes by Ray Bradbury

"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."

"One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight. At that time, James Nightshade of 97 Oak Street was thirteen years, eleven months, twenty-three days old. Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more..."

"Not everyone born free and equal, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man. Me? I won't stomach them for a minute."

"And in the years when your shadow leaned clear across the land as you lay abed nights with your heartbeat mounting to the billions, his invention must let a man drowse easy in the falling leaves like the boys in autumn who, comfortably strewn in the dry stacks, are content to be a part of the death of the world..."

"Love is easy, and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you're in love."

"The ability to "fantasize" is the ability to survive. It's wonderful to speak about this subject because there have been so many wrong-headed people dealing with it.... The so-called realists are trying to drive us insane, and I refuse to be driven insane.... We survive by fantasizing. Take that away from us and the whole damned human race goes down the drain."

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories."

"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."
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