It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.
Interpretation
Success in writing requires perseverance through many failures.
Ray Bradbury's quote emphasizes the necessity of practice and resilience in the creative process. It suggests that only through the willingness to write extensively and often poorly can one eventually produce quality work, highlighting that mastery comes with sustained effort and overcoming initial shortcomings.
In practice
A motivational speech for aspiring writers at a literary conference.
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.
Even today, I dare not say that I have reached a state of achievement. I'm still learning, for learning is boundless.
Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
I don't think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal. You weigh the sides, you do some truth-testing, you apply judgment to them.
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.
I think mental illness or madness can be an escape also. People don't develop a mental illness because they are in the happiest of situations, usually. One doctor observed that it was rare when people were rich to become schizophrenic. If they were poor or didn't have too much money, then it was more likely.
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