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.
Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
Everything that's created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.
I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.
In any creative industry, the fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive, at least to me, that a new direction is the only direction.
Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.
In order to have a real relationship with our creativity, we must take the time and care to cultivate it.
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