Quotes

From Ray Bradbury, who seems to be a Teddy Roosevelt Zen No-Mind "Be the ball" adherent:

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."

"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."

"All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try."

Bradbury also said:

"Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile deliquence."

"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance."

I think I'm getting better at the first, and the second has never really been an issue. Bradbury's Wikipedia entry points out that he's still alive, which surprised me, but it also includes this unbelievable trivia:

One well known irony is that Bradbury, despite writing about spaceships and interplanetary travel and having lived in Los Angeles for most of his life, has never driven a car.

Kinda casts the whole thing into doubt, since living in LA for 50 years & never driving seems unphysical, even if your family and friends accommodated you as much as possible. Then again, Paul Erdos went around pretending he couldn't boil water either (Incidentally, I'll bet you $1 that my ancestral degree of separation from Erdos is less than my Erdos number). Finally, from yesterday's Quote of the Day I include this Wodehousian bit:

"'Whom are you?' he asked, for he had attended business college."
- George Ade

Ha! Take that business school graduates.