“Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.”

- Ray Bradbury

"I'm not afraid of machines. I don't think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we're fools."

- Ray Bradbury

"Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. . . What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping."

- Ray Bradbury

"The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours...Two or three thousand words in a few hours is not that hard. Don’t let people interfere with you. Boot ’em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done."

- Ray Bradbury

“Without libraries, what have we? We have no past and no future.”

- Ray Bradbury

"Anytime I've ever made a decision, an intellectual decision, I've been invariably wrong. Anytime I make a decision out of my guts, out of wanting a thing, out of needing a thing, it's been right, because then you're working with your true self."

- Ray Bradbury

Treasure this day, and treasure yourself. Truly, neither will ever happen again!

* A fine message to All of us. Thanks, Mr. Bradbury!


This was a Happy BD card from a Relative/Librarian: Her best wishes included, "When I saw this card, I immediately thought of you."

RE: https://theshopsatwagnersquare...r-day-you-deserve-it

fjp451, what a great card! Thanks for sharing it. Given some of the wise things Ray Bradbury said over the years (many of which appear in this post), this could start a trend!

"Fall in love and stay in love. Explode. Don't intellectualize. Get passionate about ideas. Cram your head full of images. Stay in the library. Stay off the Internet and all that crap. Read all the great books. Read all the great poetry. See all the great films. Fill your life with metaphors. And then explode. And you're bound to do something good."

- Ray Bradbury

"We must all be responsible to our own ability, whatever it is. We have to look at ourselves and say, 'What am I cut out to be? Then I must become that.'"

- Ray Bradbury

“I was born in Waukegan in 1920 and had my second birth at the Carnegie Library in Waukegan. I came to full bloom there, and when I was 12, after reading most of the books in that fantastic library, I became Ray Bradbury. What more could I ask? What a wonderful town to be born in. What a library to grow in. What a town to come back to; a town that I know and love with all of my heart.”

- Ray Bradbury

"I have not so much thought my way through life as done things, and found what it was and who I was after the doing."

- Ray Bradbury

"I think I will be indebted to John Houston the rest of my life for the 'love-hate' I bear him. I still love him, but the last time I saw him I wanted to run up, throw my arms around him, and kill him in the same instant..."

- Ray Bradbury (whose turbulent dealings with John Houston regarding the screenplay Ray wrote for the film MOBY DICK are well known.)

"I don't often comment on what critics say about my writing. I leave it to my readers to decide whether the critics were right or wrong."

- Ray Bradbury

"To put out your hand, freely, in a library, is to put out your blind hand and touch humanity."

- Ray Bradbury