Ray Bradbury on the Secret of Life, Work, and Love

“I don’t put off to tomorrow doing what I must do, right now, to find out what my secret self needs, wants, desires with all its heart.”

Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920–June 5, 2012) was not only one of the most celebrated writers of the past century and an invaluable source of practical advice on the craft, such as the creative benefits of list-making and the secret to a fruitful daily routine, but also a modern sage with a seemingly bottomless well ofquotable wisdom on everything from failure tospace exploration to the interplay of emotion and intelligence to the importance of working with love.

In this wonderful short clip for CBC’s 1968 documentary The Illustrated Man, titled after Bradbury’s 1951 sci-fi collection of the same name, the beloved author shares his pithy wisdom on the secret of life, work, and love — a vivid manifestation of his contagious “hereness and nowness,” as CBC host Fletcher Markle elegantly puts it.

In the instance of getting an idea, I go act it out on paper — I don’t put it away. I don’t delay, I don’t put off to tomorrow doing what I must do, right now, to find out what my secret self needs, wants, desires with all its heart. And then it speaks, and I have enough brains to get out of the way and listen.

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We act out these tensions continually — we keep cleansing the stream. Just as any impurity running downhill in a river, by the time it travels nine miles, is purified, so the life of a man traveling to the sea — which is our inevitable death someday — purifies itself. It must — because if you do not purify, these tensions remain in — and turn in on yourself — and destroy you.

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The farmer who farms creatively and happily is a man that knows every stalk of wheat or corn that comes up on his land because he has tilled these fields, because he has planted the seed, because he has picked the fruit, because he has painted the barn… So we belong only by doing, and we own only by doing, and we love only by doing and knowing. And if you want an interpretation of life and love, that would be the closest thing I can come to.