"When I look back now [upon my childhood], I realize what a trial I must have been for my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon."

- Ray Bradbury

"What you’ve got to do from this night forward is stuff your head with more different things from various fields . . . I’ll give you a program to follow every night, very simple program. For the next thousand nights, before you go to bed every night, read one short story. That’ll take you ten minutes, 15 minutes. Okay, then read one poem a night from the vast history of poetry. Stay away from most modern poems. It’s crap. It’s not poetry! It’s not poetry. Now if you want to kid yourself and write lines that look like poems, go ahead and do it, but you’ll go nowhere. Read the great poets, go back and read Shakespeare, read Alexander Pope, read Robert Frost. But one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time, comparing them. Read the essays of Aldous Huxley, read Lauren Eisley, great anthropologist. . . I want you to read essays in every field. On politics, analyzing literature, pick your own. But that means that every night then, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay—at the end of a thousand nights, Jesus God, you’ll be full of stuff, won’t you?"

- Ray Bradbury

"The act of writing is, for me, like a fever — something I must do. And it seems I always have some new fever developing, some new love to follow and bring to life."

- Ray Bradbury

“The problem is, of course, our politicians, men who have no romance in their hearts or dreams in their heads. JFK, for a brief moment in his last year, challenged us to go to the moon. But even he wasn’t motivated by astronomical love. He cried, ‘Watch my dust!’ to the Russians, and we were off.”

- Ray Bradbury

"I think life is too serious to be taken seriously."

- Ray Bradbury

“I wanted to become the greatest writer in the world. Aren’t you glad I finally made it?”

- Ray Bradbury

"Let me hear from you!"
-Ray Bradbury's closing comment on his very first letter to my classes (and family) after we had forwarded notes, cards, and artwork related to our reading and studies of Martian Chronicles. These had been sent to his publishing house address (in Chicago, as I recall).

The package we received in return was mailed back to my school and actually arrives a "few months" later due to eventual rehandling by publishing staff. There were numerous RB story items and classic inked caricatures that still make my day when revisited. These came from his LA home address! His comments and keepsakes were extremely generous. I was honored that he had shared his home address. His letter commented that he would have sent a message to each of my students, but at the time he was "as busy as all Hades due to daily efforts on a new F451 screenplay for Mel Gibson." This was his stationery for this letter: 5/6/96
RE: https://natedsanders.com/ItemI...00031/47859j_lg.jpeg

We stayed in touch with Mr. Bradbury right up until June 3rd, 2012 (our last note mailed to him from our family)!!

"It was a pleasure to burn!"
-Opening line of Fahrenheit 451!
I have been asked to speak with an AP HS Literature class at out local school district as they conclude their reading of the novel and viewing of the original 1966 François Truffaut movie. I will share many of the letters, posters, and timeless insights Mr. Bradbury shared with us from 5/96 to 6/12.

“Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it.”
I will challenge these young folks with RB's powerful message to each of us!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fjp451,

“Love what you do, and do what you love."

Today ~ 21 AP students for aprox. an hour of RB related topics.
A presentation, sharing of his countless gifts, photos, books, and discussions on F451, Gorlden Apples, Martians, DW, Ice Cream Suit, et al! So Pleased to hear they are still reading Shakespeare, Shelley, Hemingway, Frank, Steinbeck, Lee, Huxley, Wiesel, Orwell... all banned or challenged in recent years.

I feel they came out of the seminar with a firm understanding of Mr. Bradbury's timeless opening statement, "It was a pleasure to burn!"

“I blundered into creativity as blindly as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true.”

- Ray Bradbury

"In that film LOVE STORY, there's a line, 'Love means never having to say you're sorry.' That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you're sorry every day for some little thing or other."

- Ray Bradbury

"We have needed to be bound together to the Universe, to the Cosmos. We have needed to collect our souls, our thoughts, our flesh, all in one packet, to feel a compound of the earth we live on, the sun we circle, the nebula we inhabit, and the stars beyond the stars."

- Ray Bradbury

"The imagination of man is the promise of our flesh and blood delivered to far worlds."

- Ray Bradbury

"I have two rules in life—to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done.”

- Ray Bradbury

"If some boys visit my grave in a hundred years and write on the marble, in pencil, 'he was a storyteller', I will be happy."

- Ray Bradbury

“It’s part of the nature of man to start with romance and build to a reality.”

- Ray Bradbury