You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you're nuts, and you're not as popular with girls as you should be.
Interpretation
Choosing your own path can lead to social penalties and misunderstandings from others.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury highlights the challenges that come with individuality and the courage required to forge one's own path. It suggests that pursuing unique or unconventional choices may result in isolation or criticism, especially from societal norms and expectations, which can also impact one's social life and relationships.
In practice
In a speech about embracing uniqueness, this quote can illustrate the struggles of being different.
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.
Even behind prison walls I can see the heavy clouds and the blue sky over the horizon
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me . . . and asked me in a whisper . . . "Can you describe this?" And I said: "I can."
People used to stare at me when I was growing up because I was in a wheelchair, and I hated it. Now they're staring at me because they know me. How amazing is that? It's 'Oh, that's Dylan!' Not, 'Oh, there's a guy in a wheelchair.'
I knew being accepted was going to be hard, but I knew I was involved in a situation that was going to bring opportunities to other blacks.
You'll live. Only the best get killed.
So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.
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