Advice from Ray Bradbury: Love what YOU love

From Letters of Note, via The Happiness Project.

• [pjcamp]

  More advice from Ray Bradbury:

  “We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

  http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2010/08/16/ray-bradbury-is-sick-of-big-government-our-country-is-in-need-of-a-revolution/

  “Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

  “It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere. . .”

  “. . .He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen. ”

  http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=ray+bradbury

• [Ugly Canuck]

  “Love what you love”?

  Love to love you, Baby!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5AztWseIdU

• [Pliny the Elder]

  “I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

  –Ray Bradbury

  • [Mark Frauenfelder]

    That is the greatest thing anyone has ever said!

• [Anonymous]

  Curious why the address to Ray Bradbury Enterprises was blurred out? It is very easy to find and pretty much public information. Maybe they meant to blur out the addressee’s name instead. Still love Ray the old Luddite he still is.

• [Dawn Castle]

  A class act. His prose reads like poetry. His words like music.

• [Anonymous]

  Unfortunately what I love is inappropriate singing! It’s unfortunate for others, I mean.

• [Pantograph]

  So-so advice but awesome presentation.
  I wish all correspondence were accompanied by Giacometti-esque pen drawings.

• [kaminariko]

  The grammar, typos, sans serif typewriter font, and overtypes are almost artistic, especially next to the drawing. I could actually see that as some sort of statement about humanity and technology in general coming from Ray Bradbury. It would be interesting to use that style in a web site design, I think.

• [emmdeeaych]

  AMEN

• [Anonymous]

  That was a pleasure to read.

• [Anonymous]

  Man, only Ray Bradbury could make me tear up in <2 paragraphs.

• [JBHemlock]

  Amen, baby! Amen!

• [nixiebunny]

  Fine advice.

  Wheelwriter? (I love playing font sleuth.)

• [Anonymous]

  The illustration is by Joe Mugnaini. It was done for Ray’s “World of Ray Bradbury” plays back in the 1960′s.

• [Sarah Neptune]

  Great advice (and grammar), and wild personal stationery!

• [Shart Tsung]

  Did he mean to say “Who Die?”

• [Tim]

  Well fuck me, Ray Bradbury.

  • [emmdeeaych]

    +1 internet. Wish I’d said it.

• [Anonymous]

  He meant “Who died?” It was just a typo. Which he can’t fix. Because he doesn’t like computers.

• [Anonymous]

  I decided to make a typography poster out of part of the text from this! I thought the phrasing was hilarious and weird out of context. You can check it out here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wiretapstudios/5582674666/

• [RSFSmee]

  How can one not agree? With the caveat, of course, that it’s also rather important to have clean water, ample food, and, if possible, a roof over -one’s head — and that purely following one’s passions will not *necessarily* produce this result.

• [buddy66]

  When I was a teenager I thought Bradbury was the greatest short story writer alive. Later, my daughter did too (although she’s never forgiven him for the one about the buried dog). Even later, my grandson begged us for the money to take a writing class from the Master. And it ain’t over yet…

  His son….

• [Anonymous]

  thanks Mark

• [GregS]

  Great advice (and presentation). Wish I’d figured that out when I was 9. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I decided to embrace my inner nerd, to let my geek flag fly. Hate to think of how many years I spent feeling conflicted about this before that.