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.
Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy... or they become legend.
Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference.
All the truth in the world is held in stories.
Defeat in this world is no disgrace and that is what they cannot understand. If you really fought well and fought for the right thing.
The analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas.
Out of anger comes controversy, out of controversy comes conversation, out of conversation comes action.
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