Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.
Interpretation
Love serves as a fundamental motivation for creativity and action.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury emphasizes that love is the core driving force behind not only personal actions but also creative endeavors. He suggests that to truly succeed in writing or any other pursuit, one must be fueled by a genuine passion for what they create, both for themselves and for their audience. Without that love, success becomes unattainable.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech for aspiring writers.
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 can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t 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.
I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.
Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood.
Maybe we were together in another life...in a parallel universe, maybe our paths are not supposed to cross twice, maybe your arms are not supposed to go around me. I hear about you now & then, I wonder where you are & how you feel. Sometimes I walk by & I look up to your balcony, just to make sure you were real-just to make sure that I can still feel you...it appears to me that Destiny Rules.
It was my last act of love (first words to her mother in the hospital after her first major suicide attempt)
I dread the loss of her I've never touched love keeps me a slave in a cage of tears I gnaw my tongue with which to her I can never speak I miss a woman who was never born I kiss a woman across the years that say we shall never meet Everything passes Everything perishes Everything palls my thought walks away with a killing smile leaving discordant anxiety which roars in my soul No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope
You're my backbone. You're a blessing. You're a piece of my heart. You're the air I breathe. And you're the strongest person I know, and I'm so sorry for having to put you through this and having to put our family through this.
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