What should I do?" "Throw up in your typewriter every morning." "Yeah." "Clean up every noon.
Interpretation
Creativity requires effort and often involves messiness before achieving clarity.
This quote by Ray Bradbury emphasizes the chaotic and sometimes unpleasant nature of the creative process. It suggests that true artistic expression involves a raw, unfiltered output ('throw up in your typewriter'), and that one must be willing to engage in this messy process and then refine their work ('clean up every noon') to create something worthwhile.
In practice
A motivational speech about embracing the challenges of the creative process.
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.
And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.
Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.
There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.
It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.
C'est véritablement utile puisque c'est joli. It is truly useful since it is beautiful.
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.