Ray Bradbury Quotes

The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way. Leave room for God to walk in the room. And when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say 'thank you.'

People have talents that are different. Where does the creative flow come from - inside us or from a higher power? I don't ask any questions. I just write it down.

I may have a general broad-based idea of what I want to write about when I sit down to write a book, but I don't have any idea of what it's going to say. I would call my experience of creativity 'inspired by God' to produce certain pieces of information that might be useful to others.

Is there a spiritual element to creativity? Hell, yes. Our mightiest ally (our indispensable ally) is belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel.

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.

Sometimes strange and wonderful things will pop into my head. And sometimes I will see something in the world that is the beginning of a story. I always have a notebook with me so that I can write down what I see and hear.

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there's a house under there, and I'm pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That's how I feel. It's like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: 'If I sit down and do this, everything will come out okay.'

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.

If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?

I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.

It's not just about acting. I love film, I'm a director now, I love writing, I love producing, I love having a company that makes films and to be prolific and have a place to put all the ideas that are constantly bubbling up inside of me and that don't let me sleep at night.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me - that I didn't do them myself.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.

I feel like I have so many stories basting in my mind, and they come busting out when they're ready.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.