How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.
Interpretation
Working with the wrong motives can hinder creativity and distort our understanding of success and failure.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury emphasizes the detrimental effects of pursuing work for unworthy reasons or superficial goals. He suggests that when individuals align their efforts with incorrect motives, it can stifle their creative potential and lead to a skewed perception of what true success and failure entail, thus emphasizing the importance of intrinsic motivation and passion in the creative process.
In practice
A motivational speaker could use this quote to inspire young artists at an exhibition.
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.
I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.
There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.
This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.
Highly creative people have a gift for connecting supposedly unrelated elements and ideas. They cross borders without regard for customs posts or No Trespassing signs. They throw suspension bridges across great distances. These elegant and unexpected combinations flow together beautifully in the twilight zone, where metaphor and resemblance rules in place of logic and classification.
Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.
You don't have to work for Google, or any of the other firms encouraging staff to pursue personal projects on company time, to use slowness to unlock your creativity. Anyone can do it. Start by clearing space in your schedule for rest, daydreaming and serendipity. Take breaks away from your desk, especially when you get stuck on a problem.
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