Jun 27, 2014 / Inspiration

“Sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.”

As Writing 101 winds down, we appreciate this quirky reminder from writer Ray Bradbury on the importance of reading and writing every day.

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcus_hansson/87885327/in/photostream/">Image</a> by Marcus Hansson from Göteborg, Sweden (The best days are not planned) [<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0">CC-BY-2.0</a>].

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

– Ray Bradbury

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  16. I am left completely speechless . I was reading this , and i was listening to Brian Crain’ ,”Dream of Flying ” simultaneously , and two beautiful things together , just gave me chills . And now suddenly my life makes perfect sense with all my failures and happiness .

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  24. Today I will wear a book like a hat upon my crazy head! Thanks for this beautiful reminder of why we write. Also, you should know that Writing101 has helped me, as a writer, in ways I still can’t even comprehend. My brain has exploded with ideas through this process. Much gratitude to all of you for your support and encouragement. Happy writing to all!

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  28. Amazing! You have such talent for metaphors and symbolism. I, myself, would one day like to become an author and your warm words motivate me. Thanks so much and I wish you the best of luck with everything. I hope that one day I might be able to wield words as if they were mere feathers and to carefully weave them into an intricate web as you have done with this post.

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