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.
It often feels like a tremendous amount of work is required to get an idea moving forward, like pushing a train uphill. But at a certain point, the thing takes on its own momentum, and takes unexpected turns. So it's that feeling of holding on, rather than pushing it, that is the most exciting thing. It's that need to occasionally bounce off the walls, letting anything happen for any reason, and having nothing to guide you that is the joy.
I think it is the weak and the young and the minorities that you need to look after to get a healthy creative environment - to get a lot of choices, a lot of different styles of music, a lot experimental stuff that everyone else feeds off.
There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.
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.
Whatever the creative industry, when you're confronted with the challenge of coming up with a Big Idea, always work with the most talented, innovative mind available. Hopefully... that's you.
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