Ray Bradbury Quotes

Years ago I read an interview with Paula Fox in which she said that in writing, truth is just as important as story. Reading that interview was the first time I really understood that there's no point in trying to impress people with my cleverness when I can just try to write honestly about what matters most to me.

It is more important to just be as honest as I can about my characters than to write some really great sentence.

The truth needs so little rehearsal.

It is always easier to write from the heart and deal with things in the present.

In my experience, when you're writing, you want the truth, and you don't want to be apologetic in any way. But there is something in writing, the complexity of it, that works against that aim.

Honesty and truth in writing is so important, and I think that YA writing above all is honest, and I think that appeals to anyone of any age.

If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses dont go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

Don't write slogans, write truths.

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.

I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Good writing is about telling the truth.

I can't write a lie; the world of imagination is no good. I objectively capture my own experiences and those of my friends. I want to put true feelings into words. If I make a song when I'm sad, it's a dark one, but I think that's good. No matter when I want to be true to myself.

Acting is no longer about lying. It's now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy.

You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.

Some professional writers write everyday no matter what and perhaps that's the way it should be done, but it's not the way I do it. If I'm not pregnant with words and I'm not in labor with them, I don't even try to bring them forth because they won't be any good anyway. Once I'm ready to deliver, it's like being pregnant. I've got to find a typewriter or a piece of paper. The only words that have ever had any possible value to others seem to have been those words that just had to come out.

The truth can be very sharp. But it makes a cleaner wound than lies. It will not fester

When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. . . . Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.

I cut through the nonsense with the blinding light of truth.

Simple is the speech of truth.