Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.
Interpretation
Being overly self-aware hinders creative expression in all forms of art and life.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury suggests that self-consciousness acts as a barrier to genuine artistic expression, whether in performing arts, visual arts, or even in how one lives their life. He argues that true artistry comes from a place of authenticity and freedom from self-doubt, implying that living authentically is the highest form of art one can achieve.
In practice
This quote can be used as a motivational reminder for artists during a creative block.
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.
To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business-not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything is flaking away into... rhetoric and plot.
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
Grant that the true organ with which the beautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts are likely to affect the feelings indirectly.
A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.
Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.
I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomine, but something wonderfully expressive.
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