Ray Bradbury Interview Excerpts
Jul. 6th, 2012 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwritesVia Longform.org I found this Ray Bradbury interview on the Paris Review. The interview started in the late seventies and was revived sometime during the mid-to-late oughts after the death of the original interviewer. (If you know a little about the Paris Review's history with the CIA, it makes you wonder if editor George Plimpton nixed the interview because he found Bradbury of insufficient propaganda value. I'm pretty sure Mr. Bradbury would have found that flattering.)
I am a quote hoarder and I found this interview to be chock full of quotable lines. It was also a pain to copy and paste all that over to Evernote and I wanted to share these gems with my LJ friends. So the following are excerpts from the words of this late great soul. I don't agree with everything he says but he makes me think, and that is more important than agreement.
On Acceptance
If I'd found out that Norman Mailer liked me, I'd have killed myself. . . . I'm glad Kurt Vonnegut didn't like me either.
It's the terrible creative negativism, admired by New York critics, that caused [Vonnegut's] celebrity. New Yorkers love to dupe themselves, as well as doom themselves. I haven't had to live like that. I'm a California boy. I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.
On Science Fiction
Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it's really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us.
On Influences
I've always believed that you should do very little reading in your own field once you're into it. But at the start it's good to know what everyone's doing.
A conglomerate heap of trash, that's what I am. But it burns with a high flame.
On Libraries and Education
I'm completely library educated. I've never been to college. . . . And it's far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don't have to listen to anyone.
I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.
You can't learn to write in college. It's a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don't. They have prejudices. . . . The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don't have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.
Our education system has gone to hell. It's my idea from now on to stop spending money educating children who are sixteen years old. We should put all that money down into kindergarten. Young children have to be taught how to read and write.
We should forget about teaching children mathematics. They're not going to use it ever in their lives. Give them simple arithmetic—one plus one is two, and how to divide, and how to subtract. Those are simple things that can be taught quickly. But no mathematics because they are never going to use it, never in their lives, unless they are going to be scientists, and then they can simply learn it later. . . . So it must be reading and writing. . . . And by the time children are six, they are completely educated and then they can educate themselves. The library will be the place where they grow up.
On Short Stories and Novels
I try to encourage my student friends and my writer friends to write a short story in one day so it has a skin around it, its own intensity, its own life, its own reason for being.
But a novel has all kinds of pitfalls because it takes longer and you are around people, and if you're not careful you will talk about it. The novel is also hard to write in terms of keeping your love intense. It's hard to stay erect for two hundred days.
(Asked whether his preference for short stories over novels might be an issue of patience, ADHD) I think there's some truth to that. Turn a liability into an asset. My attention is not there. So, I write what I can write: short stories.
(Asked whether he wrote outlines) No, never. You can't do that. It's just like you can't plot tomorrow or next year or ten years from now. When you plot books you take all the energy and vitality out. There's no blood. You have to live it from day to day and let your characters do things.
On Technology
A computer's a typewriter. Why would I need another typewriter? I have one.
[E-books and Kindles] aren’t books. . . . A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you. I'm sorry.
(Luna: I'm just glad he evidently didn't know about Amazon deleting its users' Kindle books. The only choice more ironic than George Orwell would have been Fahrenheit 451.)
On Writing
It's the exquisite joy and madness of my life, and I don't understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. . . . If I had to work at it I would give it up. I don't like working.
Every time you write for anyone, regardless of who they are, no matter how right the cause you may believe in, you lie.
On Attitude
I don't believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. . . . You must live life at the top of your voice!
The need for romance is constant . . . You can’t kill a dream. Social obligation has to come from living with some sense of style, high adventure, and romance.
On Marriage
If you don't have a sense of humor, you don't have a marriage. 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.
On Life
I have three rules to live by. One, get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin. And when all else fails, run like hell!
When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, “Live forever.” And I decided to.
I am a quote hoarder and I found this interview to be chock full of quotable lines. It was also a pain to copy and paste all that over to Evernote and I wanted to share these gems with my LJ friends. So the following are excerpts from the words of this late great soul. I don't agree with everything he says but he makes me think, and that is more important than agreement.
On Acceptance
If I'd found out that Norman Mailer liked me, I'd have killed myself. . . . I'm glad Kurt Vonnegut didn't like me either.
It's the terrible creative negativism, admired by New York critics, that caused [Vonnegut's] celebrity. New Yorkers love to dupe themselves, as well as doom themselves. I haven't had to live like that. I'm a California boy. I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.
On Science Fiction
Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it's really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us.
On Influences
I've always believed that you should do very little reading in your own field once you're into it. But at the start it's good to know what everyone's doing.
A conglomerate heap of trash, that's what I am. But it burns with a high flame.
On Libraries and Education
I'm completely library educated. I've never been to college. . . . And it's far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don't have to listen to anyone.
I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.
You can't learn to write in college. It's a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don't. They have prejudices. . . . The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don't have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.
Our education system has gone to hell. It's my idea from now on to stop spending money educating children who are sixteen years old. We should put all that money down into kindergarten. Young children have to be taught how to read and write.
We should forget about teaching children mathematics. They're not going to use it ever in their lives. Give them simple arithmetic—one plus one is two, and how to divide, and how to subtract. Those are simple things that can be taught quickly. But no mathematics because they are never going to use it, never in their lives, unless they are going to be scientists, and then they can simply learn it later. . . . So it must be reading and writing. . . . And by the time children are six, they are completely educated and then they can educate themselves. The library will be the place where they grow up.
On Short Stories and Novels
I try to encourage my student friends and my writer friends to write a short story in one day so it has a skin around it, its own intensity, its own life, its own reason for being.
But a novel has all kinds of pitfalls because it takes longer and you are around people, and if you're not careful you will talk about it. The novel is also hard to write in terms of keeping your love intense. It's hard to stay erect for two hundred days.
(Asked whether his preference for short stories over novels might be an issue of patience, ADHD) I think there's some truth to that. Turn a liability into an asset. My attention is not there. So, I write what I can write: short stories.
(Asked whether he wrote outlines) No, never. You can't do that. It's just like you can't plot tomorrow or next year or ten years from now. When you plot books you take all the energy and vitality out. There's no blood. You have to live it from day to day and let your characters do things.
On Technology
A computer's a typewriter. Why would I need another typewriter? I have one.
[E-books and Kindles] aren’t books. . . . A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you. I'm sorry.
(Luna: I'm just glad he evidently didn't know about Amazon deleting its users' Kindle books. The only choice more ironic than George Orwell would have been Fahrenheit 451.)
On Writing
It's the exquisite joy and madness of my life, and I don't understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. . . . If I had to work at it I would give it up. I don't like working.
Every time you write for anyone, regardless of who they are, no matter how right the cause you may believe in, you lie.
On Attitude
I don't believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. . . . You must live life at the top of your voice!
The need for romance is constant . . . You can’t kill a dream. Social obligation has to come from living with some sense of style, high adventure, and romance.
On Marriage
If you don't have a sense of humor, you don't have a marriage. 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.
On Life
I have three rules to live by. One, get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin. And when all else fails, run like hell!
When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, “Live forever.” And I decided to.
