Ray Bradbury Quotes

To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over...

If you can quit, then quit. If you can't quit, you're a writer.

I find that one of the most important things, as a writer, is to just show up - to just stay in the chair and fight through the difficult patches. As long as you're at the desk, and you're willing to fight it out, eventually the right words will come.

In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.

What can cake teach you about life? That practice makes perfect, and if you try something once, it probably won't be perfect, and you have to keep working on it if you want to be good at it.

Here's the bottom line; writers write. Sometimes words flow easily. Sometimes it's like sloughing through mud. Either way a professional writer keeps writing.

Writing is hard work. But if you want to become a writer you will become one. Nothing will stop you.

I think the most important thing is just to write. It sounds so simple, but sometimes it's not. You can get so distracted - -by having to work other jobs, or what other people have to say about your writing - -but the one thing that really matters is that you just keep going, especially when you're working on a novel. It's so easy to get discouraged and give up.

You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf... You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired – it’s hard work.

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

My life as a writer consists of 1/8 talent and 7/8 discipline.

This business [moviemaking] isn't easy. It's a hard business. You just keep plugging away until you figure it out. You write something you love and keep banging on people's heads until somebody lets you do it.

I always tell girls who say they want to start a band but don't have any talent, well, neither do I. I mean, I can carry a tune, but anyone who picks up a bass can figure it out. You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything- You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.

Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.

I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire. ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas.

Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready to begin. That takes a while.

Learn to write when you would rather sleep. Learn to exercise this gift of language when no conscious portion of your wits can vibrate anything but worry. Learn to write so, my son, and you can call yourself a writer.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.

People may think that because I have illustrated and written all these books it must be easy for me, but it's not really easy for me. The drawing part is easy - I love doing it. But continuing to move forward is hard.

You do have to put in a lot time to get good at anything and than includes cartoons. So I think it's true of art and everything else.

What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

It's easy to get discouraged; just keep writing because you love to do it, and you'll keep improving.

I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.'