Ray Bradbury, On Writing, Disturbance & Hope

 

 

 

 

Ray Bradbury August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012

Ray Bradbury, whose some 500 titles, spanning books, movies, plays, children’s books, and short stories, explored childhood terrors, colonialism and the erosion of individual thought, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Mr. Bradbury left a legacy of sage quotations, like “Science fiction is the art of the possible, not the art of the impossible.” He made the possible so close to truth it made us squirm. . . in a good way. “Fahrenheit 451” taught me the importance of writing to disturb thought rather than simply reflecting truth; he taught that truth is not a singular reality. “Something Wicked This Way Comes?” How many disturbing metaphors can a story deliver? Content4Good celebrates the disturbance Mr. Bradbury urges writers exercise to remake the world. Would he have described his as a legacy of hope?

“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.“

“Light?” “Burn?” Hope.

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

“Love?” “Remake the world?” Honor the legacy. May you create disturbing content today.