You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
Interpretation
Embrace a love for reading and creativity to transform your life and the world around you.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury emphasizes the importance of daily reading and immersing oneself in literature as a means of enhancing life and personal growth. He poetically describes how engaging with books can inspire profound love and creativity, ultimately allowing individuals to reshape their realities and influence the world positively.
In practice
As a speech at a library opening to inspire young readers.
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.
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
We owe our children an environment in which they can flourish, and where law enforcement, the justice system, and society as offers them a fresh start, not a jail cell.
History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.
If I look back down the years, how I was treated as a kid, if it wasn't for the teachers at my school, then I wouldn't have achieved what I have. You have to look where you came from, and we do need to get more parents involved, more running clubs and more schools. They can make a difference.
When children and youth are deprived of their right to education, their community is deprived of a sustainable future. It is all the more true with refugees.
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
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