Ray Bradbury Quotes

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

There can be no technique or formula for creativity.

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.

Creativity is something which proceeds from within, out of immeasurable and inexplicable depths, not from without, not from the world's necessity. The very desire to make the creative act understandable, to find a basis for it, is failure to comprehend it. To comprehend the creative act means to recognize that it is inexplicable and without foundation.

Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage - or for that matter, in a homelier way, picking out the right fabric for the kitchen curtains, which is also a creative act.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

We can use techniques in modifying things, in controlling things, but the first impulse has to be something that you simply cannot make just out of technique, or else it becomes perfectly evident that it is nothing but technique that you're exercising.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.

There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

I always say that I'm at my best when there's no example of what the character is supposed to be. I thrive when there's not much and I have to create it.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

You see, we are not machines and we do not have lots of ideas in a drawer.

The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience.

You can't rush inspiration.

The creative processes are so mysterious.