I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the wildness of youth and suggests that being young often comes with a sense of madness or unpredictability.
Ray Bradbury's quote encapsulates the spirit of youth and the free-spirited, sometimes eccentric nature that often accompanies it. By suggesting that being seventeen and crazy are intertwined, he highlights the adventurous and fearless mindset of adolescence, while also implying that acknowledging this youthful insanity can be both humorous and liberating.
In practice
This quote could be shared at a birthday party to celebrate the arrival of the teenage years.
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)
I never went to college, so I went to the library.
There must be something in books, something we canβt imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You donβt stay for nothing.
I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.
The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
Is a diamond less valuable because it is covered with mud? God sees the changeless beauty of our souls. He knows we are not our mistakes.
So the Dark did a simple thing. They showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing--fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to accomplish anything of great worth--fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such great fears, that are the doom of people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds.
From cane reeds, sugar. From a worm's cocoon, silk. Be patient if you can, and from sour grapes will come something sweet.
Strongest minds are often those whom the noisy world hears least.
It isn't more light we need, it isn't more truth, and it isn't more scientific data. It is more Christ, more courage, more spiritual insight to act on the light we have.
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