We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth.
Interpretation
Arts help us cope with the harsh realities of truth.
Ray Bradbury's quote emphasizes the importance of the arts in human existence. He suggests that while truth can be harsh and overwhelming, the arts provide a crucial outlet for expression, interpretation, and emotional relief, allowing us to navigate and endure the challenges of reality without succumbing entirely to its starkness.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of creativity in education, one could reference this quote to advocate for arts programs.
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.
Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.
We live in an age of music for people who don't like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren't that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music's annoying, or at the very least they don't need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.
Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe.
In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.