She also gave us hundreds of interviews where she talked about what living a creative life was actually like.

What follows are my favorite things I’ve found (so far)…

Age 28, “Björk Free,” by Ekow Eshun, The Face, November 1993

Björk: There’s nothing better than waking up in the morning in the middle of nowhere. You can do whatever you want, just shout at the top of your voice and be absolutely free.

Interviewer: What’s so important to you about having freedom?

Björk: I dunno. I guess it’s just being able to do what you want to do. It doesn’t really take explaining, does it? It’s like looking at a menu. Why do you want a piece of cake and not an apple? Who knows?

But the point is you want it.

There were so many things I wanted. To be a singer, a skateboard champion, to experience meditating in a Buddhist temple. I’ve always been very aware that you only have one life, and you have to try as many things as possible.

Age 29, “Björk Guðmundsdóttir Speaks,” by Tim van Holder, Oor, June 1995

In many ways, Debut was still much in the sign of conflicts. Conflicts with myself and with the outside world. I was wondering whether I had the right to fill an album with nothing but my own songs. Could I be so selfish? And did I have the right to tell others what to do? I didn’t think so.

That was a little bit my problem: I really wanted to work with other people, but I didn’t want to dominate them. I wanted those people to surprise and stimulate ME. If I knew exactly what they were going to do, I was no longer interested. I had to get something in return. But that has changed a lot by now; I learned what is necessary, the past two years.

I mean, I grew up with the Punk state of mind: I really believed in anarchy and thought that one person shouldn’t be controlled by another. But it’s not that simple. True, it is a beautiful philosophy and I still believe in it for a part, but if too many people work on the same thing, it loses its identity. Like if a large number of people build one house and everyone puts in some ideas of their own, then it’s no longer a house; then it’s a compromise.

I for one don’t have any problems respecting other people’s ideas or visions. I’ve made film music in the past and I tried to completely enter into the state of mind of the filmmaker. I tried to make the music that was necessary for his film. But I did, within the confines of the film and the ideas behind it, go my own way. Because of that I learned to trust that others, when they work on my albums, will do the same thing. I’ve learned to respect them and give them the freedom they need. But I set the limits.

I’ve shaken two more inheritances from the punk ideology: firstly, the conviction that musical ineptitude also means musical freedom. Those punk bands can say what they want, but that is absolute bullshit. If you don’t have any technique, if you don’t know what you’re doing with your instrument, then you don’t have a lot of freedom, no, then you are very limited: your horizon is very small. The more knowledge and technique, the more space and freedom.

The same goes for discipline. I used to think that discipline stood in the way of any form of free expression. But the contrary is true. If you can, like I now can, gather enough discipline to, for instance, do interviews for twelve days and talk about nothing but yourself all that time, you create an enormous freedom for yourself: you can say what you want.

Secondly, there was the stubborn clinging to the do-it-yourself principle; I got rid of that as well. The annoying things, the dirty jobs, I still do myself because I think I’m responsible for that, but creatively I work with as many people as possible.

Over the last few years I learned that one and one isn’t necessarily two: the result of your input and that of someone else usually has a little extra. So one and one is often three. And since I know that, I’m capable of doing 900 interviews without getting suicidal tendencies, or playing the same song five times a week when I’m on tour without getting bored with it. I know that the sum of time, place, things and people always has a different result. Things like that make my job something exciting, something precious.

Luckily, my punk roots have never led to a political position. I know it’s a cliche, but I don’t think I have the right to tell other people what to do or how to think. My political conviction is inside of me.

It’s about choices like: do I control you or should you control me? I love him; do I have to make him love me as well? This girl wants to kill herself; should I try to get her to change her mind, or is it her own choice? Should I give or take? That’s what it’s all about with me.

That is, as far as I’m concerned, what pop music is all about: helping people with their personal politics, their emotional problems and how they have to sympathize with that. Not by forcing things on them, but by showing them how I feel about certain things. Then they can do what they want with that. I prefer doing that over offering ready-made solutions.

Age 29, “The World According to Björk,” by Sandy Masuo, Option, September 1995

Music has existed ever since some of the monkeys decided to become men, you know, and even before that — has been about taking the noises of your surroundings and making music out of it. I mean, you could take some African tribe, and whatever music that they made was from the nature around them. And someone like Bach would structure music like the German sort of hierarchy of thought that was going on at the time.

If you walk down a main street today in the average city — which is where most Westernized people live — you hear these quiet car noises, you hear car alarms, you hear mobile telephones. You hear people, you hear kids screaming. You hear the wind, you probably hear some animals, probably pigeons. And machine noises are everywhere. When you put your video in your VCR — that noise when it swallows the tape — and when your microwave oven is finished and you hear all those beeps and peeps. You should be making music out of these noises.

It’s brave and real to make techno music. I don’t think it’s pessimistic. I don’t think it’s escapist. I don’t think it’s unreal. I think it’s completely realistic. I’m not talking about being a pretentious arty git, or being like, really deep. I’m talking about being brave enough to make music that’s about today.

Age 30, “Passing Notes with Bjork: A Study of Human Behavior,” by Nathalie-Roze Fischer, iD Magazine, September 1996

Interviewer: List your priorities in order of importance.

Björk: IMPOSSIBLE! It changes everyday and I’m terrified of having a recipe for life. It scares the shit out of me. I wonder about the future, but I never plan on it. The only project I really have to do that for is my best one: Sindri, my son. With kids, you can’t always be spontaneous, but I think that mostly my adventures are good for him too.

Interviewer: Did you plan on having a child so young?

Björk: No, but I’m glad that I did it then, because life was less complicated at that point. I’m pro-choice, but for me it felt right, even though it was a surprise. Unlike what tons of people say, being a single-mother is great. I owe him for all the joy he gives me. He has a lot of love in his life and that multiplies in mine too. We’re like friends too, not just connected by the blood. I love his spirit.

Age 30, “Freaky Mömma,” Jennifer Tility, Bust, September 1996

Interviewer: What do you see as your mission as an artist?

Björk: I guess to smitten people. Meaning a lot of things, it depends on what day it is and what situation I’m in. I sing about emotion and sometimes, it’s sympathetic, sometimes it’s to remind people of being alive. I’m not saying necessarily that I succeed all of the time but that’s my target, you see, that’s why I’m still doing this job after all of these years.

Interviewer: How do you know when you’re laying down a track then, whether you’ve done that?

Björk: You can just feel it. I think people should not confuse it with something like “godly” or “otherworldly” or “supernatural” or “Ghostbusters” or “diva” or “power” — especially not power. It’s the opposite. It’s a very humble energy. It’s kind of hard to describe without sounding really fake. It’s just like when you meet someone the first time and you just know you’re going to be great friends. It’s like, how did you know that you fell in love or not? You just know.

Interviewer: Do you feel that music, or other kinds of art, has an obligation to innovate?

Björk: What I don’t like about the word “art” is the fact that certain people are artists and certain people are not. The minute you think that this energy — like what you say, “innovative” — belongs to certain people and not to others, you’ve got it all wrong. Then you’ve got some sort of VIP or hierarchy of that energy. That energy belongs to everyone. You can be creative just by driving a taxi but you have a great sense of humor — I consider that very creative. I admire different people that can be in that kind of situation and still just come up with something that never existed before. At the end of the day, that’s what creativity is about, coming up with something that never existed before.

Interviewer: Do you feel like there have been innovations in pop music in the past 20 years? Has there been a lot going on?

Björk: I’m just trying to draw the attention away from the pop music thing and show that it’s the same struggles that everyone is dealing with. So at the end of the day, you’re born with ten fingers, two eyes, and a mouth and an imagination and you get like 50 or 60 years out of life. It’s your duty to use what you’ve got and not just put yourself to sleep or function like a robot. It doesn’t matter what job you do, to wake up in the morning and actually find that day exciting is the biggest victory you can do. And then, say, to do a song like that, which is my job, sing them and go [intake hiss of breath] just before I go onstage, I’m like, “Woohoo!” It’s just an appetite for life and enthusiasm; life wins death — 1-0. And I’m always trying not to be philosophical or deep but, for me, it’s everywhere. It’s not just in pop music.

Age 35, “Björk in Paradise,” by James Servin, Nylon, June 2001

I never have a marketing plan like a lot of pop musicians do. I let the work just take as long as it needs to, because the creative process is like a plant. That’s the best thing about creativity. You can’t say, OK, by Tuesday, I want this twig to have grown three centimeters northwest. It won’t do that; it will just go whenever it wants to. The only thing you can do is make it feel good, and make sure you give it the nourishment it wants. I’m very protective of the creative process.

For most people, the eyes are a lot more developed than the ears. For most people, music is a pretty abstract thing. If you look at my songs as a cave, the words and the photographs are the guide who goes out of the cave and says, ‘Listen, look in here.’ Sort of a David Attenborough thing: If you look right here, there’s a bit of joy here, and if you look on the left, there’s a bit of humor. Go a little deeper in the caves, and there’s some pain. The words and the images are most like signposts, a tool to describe the dogs, because I want to communicate.

Age 38, “Voices Carry,” by Lorraine Ali, Newsweek, September 6, 2004

I think about all the albums I found in secondhand stores that weren’t even big when they came out, but totally saved my life. Those artists jumped off the edge.

I went solo at 27 because I felt I was just having too easy of a life. I was relaxing, going to band rehearsal, playing with my little baby.

I thought, wait a minute, you can’t pick all those fruits and enjoy them and not make any efforts yourself. I had to give it a go instead of being a consumer who made everyone else take the big risks.

Age 41, “I have a lot of respect for people like Debussy,” by Paul Lester, The Scotsman, August 2007

I don’t think I’ve been as extreme as people think I am. I just think change is more natural than staying the same. It’s like film directors: just because they make one movie that happens in space, it doesn’t mean that their next ten happen in space. Their next one could be a family movie or one set in the 1800s.

But a lot of music these days is stagnant. In the last 50 years pop music has become a very profitable thing and the market has made it stagnant.

I have a lot of respect for people like Ravel and Debussy; people who bridged the gap between more serious music and more public music, and were very true to themselves and didn’t water themselves down to please anyone.

I like to spend half the album like Sherlock Holmes, doing detective work, trying to find out, OK, there’s this unknown world inside me and I know what it is, and it’s like, how do I make that into sounds?

There’s a lot of time making mistakes and throwing things into the bin, until I find that place.

But maybe I enjoy so much the Sherlock Holmes aspect that by the time I’ve found it I want to find the next thing.

Age 42, “Made to Mingle with Electricity,” by Matthew Westwood, The Australian, January 2008

Every time I start an album, I’m in a place I’ve never been. I’m blindfolded and a bit lost. And I quite like that feeling.

Usually, because I’m a singer, I use my voice as a tool. I will usually walk a lot outside, and sing a lot, and ideas will come to me. The second thing is the emotional state where I’m at. Then I will maybe go out and arrange things, and find collaborators, depending on the emotional state I’m in.

The melodies almost always come first. And sometimes it’s a long process. I will let it lie there, and if it comes back to me, it’s important. I have a faith in the simplicity of the melody: it stands for something quite ancient and almost shamanic.

All the best melodies in the world, no matter what music it is, they have some magical construction inside them. Each constellation of notes stands for different emotional states.

Age 44, “The Essential Art of Being Björk,” by Mathias Augustyniak and Michaël Amzalag, Interview Magazine, 2009

You have 1,000 colors of emotion, and each album is one color exaggerated. It’s so exaggerated that it’s not me, but it’s one color, you know? And I feel like that color is in everyone.

I also think it’s fun to play games. People ask me questions like, “Oh, you look so theatrical in your photographs. Is that what you’re like when you walk down the street?”

It’s like, “Of course not.”

It’s such a silly question — it’s like being theatrical is a crime. I don’t think it’s a crime. I think humans have always needed this. In rituals for thousands and thousands of years, they’ve put on shaman costumes and have had out-of-body experiences. I think there’s a need for the theatrical. It’s very organic and ancient and human. I don’t think it’s artificial.

It’s a little bit like tarot cards. Each card is very exaggerated in what it stands for, but no person is just one tarot card.

Age 46, “Björk: what inspires me,” by Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian, May 2012

There’s something about the rhythm of walking, how, after about an hour and a half, the mind and body can’t help getting in sync.

I have written most of my melodies walking and I feel it is definitely one of the most helpful ways of sewing all of the different things in your life together and seeing the whole picture.

Age 47, “theartsdesk Q&A: Björk,” by Russ Coffey, The Arts Desk, November 2012

Interviewer: What do you think are the qualities that make for a good artist?

Björk: I don’t necessarily think that artists are the only artists. My grandad used to make fireplaces and he had a pretty great way of doing that. He’d show us Polaroids from his wallet of the latest one that he’d made. And there are mothers who bring up their children quite creatively, and so on. There are also a lot of artists who aren’t really creative, as well as non-artists who are very creative. So I don’t necessarily think the lines are drawn like that, you know.

There’s got to be something said for having idiosyncrasy and your own identity and sticking by it. It’s easy to stick by it when things are going well but when things aren’t going well it’s much harder. I would say that’s what makes a good artist. That they stick by it.

Age 49, “The Invisible Woman: A Conversation With Björk,” by Jessica Hopper, Pitchfork, January 2015

Interviewer: In the first two songs on [Vulnicura], you’re singing about wanting to find clarity. Does writing a song about something that has happened bring you clarity on the other end?

Björk: Yeah, I think so. When it works. I go for a lot of walks and I sing. That’s when you find an angle on things, where it makes sense for that particular moment. It’s more that feeling. In a way, I also rediscovered music, because [chokes up] — I’m sorry — it’s so miraculous what it can do to you; when you are in a really fucked situation, it’s the only thing that can save you. Nothing else will. And it does, it really does. I’m hoping the album will document the journey through. It is liberation in the end. It comes out as a healing process, because that’s how I experienced it myself.

Interviewer: It very much does. Towards the end of the record, there is a Buddhist sentiment about the obstacle being the path. You sing, “Don’t remove my pain, it’s my chance to heal.” That’s how we figure things out, isn’t it? That the only way out is through, that having things be easier is not helpful in the long run.

Björk: When I say that, it might come across that I’m incredibly wise. But it’s the other way around. I’m fucked and I’m trying to talk myself into it, like, “Go, girl! You can do it!” It’s me advising myself. It’s not me knowing it all — not at all. It’s just a certain route you just have to go; I went through it.

It’s really hard for me to talk about it. It really is in the lyrics. I’ve never really done lyrics like this, because they’re so teenage, so simple. I wrote them really quickly. But I also spent a long time on them to get them just right. It’s so hard to talk about the subject matter; it’s impossible — I’m sorry. [tears up] There’s so many songs about [heartbreak] that exist this in the world, because music is somehow the perfect medium to express something like this. When I did the interviews about Biophilia, I could talk for four hours about tech and education and science and instruments and pendulums — all the things we did. This one, I couldn’t put any of that stuff on top of it, because it has to be what it is. And I can’t talk about it. It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m not trying to be difficult. It really is all in there.

Age 50, “Bjork : ’I’m not into normcore sexuality,’” by Stephanie Rafanelli, The Standard, October 2016

I felt very blessed with being invited to all the A-list parties so that I could try it for a year and know that there is nothing to miss. It’s not what it looks like. They’re really boring. Everyone is standing there frozen and you can’t move, you can’t get pissed. Most importantly, the music is terrible at those parties. Horrible. And then soon there were 40 paparazzi hiding in my bushes. I thought: “I can’t write songs like this.”

I made a conscious decision that I wasn’t going to be dependent on being liked.

Age 51, “Exclusive interview with Björk: ‘The pain was a journey,’” Iceland Magazine, December 2016

As I get older this feeling of responsibility, which actually grows from the philosophy of punk, only gets stronger. I understand better that you are responsible to bring out in society those things you want to be part of. If you can‘t do that, nobody can. In ancient times, this meant that you couldn’t rely Skífan or Steinar [the big record companies in Iceland in the 80’s]. If you weren’t happy with the music which was being released, then you just made your own music.

The lesson is that you can’t point at others and blame others. You can only create something new, and that is my attitude to the projects I am working on today.

I’d rather try to be engaged. Be a participant. Try new things and ask questions: What if? What if we go this way?

Technology is part of the artistic process, crafts, our expression. The word techno comes from Greek and actually means crafts. We created a spear, carved, stitched, constructed, painted. And before we know it, we have an iPhone in our hand. I don’t know why we are trying to separate technology from other things we create. It is like trying to cut off your arm. Saying we are good and that we live here, and that technology is evil and cold, and over there ; that isn’t realistic. I want to build a bridge between the two. Technology is part of us.

Yes, I speak only for myself, but to be honest, I feel I need to use the technology that we are developing today. We watch videos, Netflix, we use our telephones and we stay in touch with our loved ones. I don’t want to overlook this technological world, which is just our everyday experience. I want to create with it. We are all emotional beings and we need to find a path for this in our everyday lives. With whatever tools we have. At least I think it’s extremely important for us to record at least a part of what is important to us with these tools.

To compose a song has many aspects. I think I compose at least one song each full moon. That is perhaps the greatest flight. Sometimes I am surprised when I listen to them later. But there are many sides to making music, and I respect each side just as much. For example when I am writing string arrangements or cutting together rhythm. It is perhaps more like making embroidery or knitting. Calmer, but just as magical and calm, and if it succeeds, just as much of a gift. A different speed, more like praying. Then you mix and master the sounds. These are all different aspects, differently streamlined approaches to the same thing: to prepare a gift you want to give. To choose with great care which of your inner conversations you are willing to share, which you feel will make some sense and connect or find harmony out there.

Age 51, “Björk Is Magic,” by Kim Taylor Bennett, Noisey, May 2017

The best feeling is if you’ve written a song you think is good. We are hard judges, we write a lot of songs we think are OK, but when you write a song you think is good — that feeling is special. You do the whole thing for that feeling and you couldn’t put it any better for me : to have nothing and then there’s something. It’s like magic. It’s a philosophical statement, it’s proactive : you don’t like this world, how about this ? It’s you coming up with an option or positive rather than the other option which is going down the drain. There’s no neutral, you have to make things to go forward — I mean that in the purest philosophical way.

[But] I love a lot of aspects, I love getting lost in making some new programs, or some software, or sitting with a bunch of nerds and drinking a lot of tea or coffee. I’m a homebody ; I mostly work in my house [in Iceland]. I have a little studio room here [in New York]. You don’t need a lot of space to make music. Occasionally you do if you’re recording strings then you go for a day in a fancy studio, but then you go back into your room, it’s less pressure. I don’t like writing in fancy studios because that hour you didn’t do anything cost a billion dollars. I also like having nice candles and I like having my little things there, making a cup of tea and telling jokes and cooking and having a few drinks.

I don’t like a nine-to-five mentality. Definitely my least favorite thing is the money side. I am very blessed because I have someone I work with since I was 16. I know a lot of my friends don’t have that and I don’t take it for granted and also it’s unconditional, we’re in it for life so it’s unconditional. Sometimes he’s my manager and sometimes he’s my record company, but he’s probably both. That’s really special.

Age 52, “Björk Invites You To Her ‘Utopia,’“ by Rachel Martin, NPR, November 2017

Björk: I started writing melodies really young. I would always walk a lot outside. I lived on the suburbs of Reykjavik. And that generation, we would walk in any weather. And I would sing a lot. And that would be my friend — how I would sort of cope with all the different weathers and the darkness.

I think when you walk and sing at the same time you’re probably regulating your breath — it’s like a certain rhythm. And I still that’s my most preferred way of singing still is walking — not fast or anything, just slowly — and actually very horizontally. I’m not much of a vertical hiker.

Interviewer: (Laughter) What is your go-to song when you’re just walking around the city?

Björk: Most of the time when I’m singing, I just make things up. I don’t really sing other people’s songs — not even my old ones. I usually always try to walk somewhere where nobody can hear me. I’m not really comfortable with people hearing. It was for so long a secret of mine so I think I’m probably quite good at hiding it.

Interviewer: I have to say there’s something funny about the idea of Björk walking around singing to herself and then being so embarrassed that you then stop when someone walks up (laughter). I mean, you are Björk. You’re pretty good at singing.

Björk: But I’m not Björk to myself. I’m just — nobody is an icon to themselves.

Age 52, “Electronic music superpower: Björk is constantly innovating,” by Ralph Moore, Mixmag, November 2017

It’s actually functional to be optimistic: half of your life is going to be dark and half of it will be light.

Unfortunately, if you only focus on the dark part it can feel to you like one hundred per hundred darkness.

But if you focus on the light, too, it’s not because you think life’s going to be all Pollyanna-ish and no darkness exists. There are dark moments on this album. But if you focus on the light, the darkness will take care of itself.

This post is part of a growing collection:

He also gave us hundreds of interviews, letters, and speeches, where he talked about what the creative life was actually like.

What follows are my favorite things I’ve found (so far)…

But first, I want to let you know I’m writing a book about Bradbury’s creative philosophy in full: Ray Bradbury: How to Live a Creative Life.

I will be posting drafts and chapters as they’re written on this website, as a bonus for all my paid subscribers.

Age 41, “Ray Bradbury Speaks of Writing as Self-Discovery,” by F. A. Rockwell, The Writer’s Trade Journal, February 1962

Interviewer: How should someone begin to be a writer?

Bradbury: Begin by knowing yourself. Buy a typewriter and find out about yourself. The body of a man’s work is a map of his own territory. Dive in. Discover the things that excite you, the ones you really love. Write only from the passions. Write only what you love with all your heart or hate with all your heart. The heart will not lie to you. On the other hand, your mind can well lie to you, rationalize, give reasons for money or intellectual posturing. Amidst this confusion, turn back to your emotions, find idols to throw stones at, find beauty to admire. All the ardent and despairing things you truly are, dare to put on display. In that direction lies creativity. To write for money is to be self-conscious. To write for snobbish praise is to be self-conscious. Any self-conscious act, by its very nature, stifles, smothers the creativity in a writer. Passion can circumvent self-consciousness. Get to the business, then, of taking-in and throwing-up, with violence, with tenderness, with hatred with joy.

Interviewer: What do you consider the most important attributes for writing success?

Bradbury: Hard work, persistence and enthusiasm. I have always believed that when one writes for oneself, out of love and excitement, quantity writing results in quality writing. Quantity writing for other people, for other aims, becomes hack writing. But quantity writing when one does it for the fun and passion of discovering all about the truth inside one’s self cannot possibly result in bad writing. It can only result in more exciting discoveries.

Don’t slant. The way to destruction and ruin is laid for you if you try to write for any single magazine or market. The twin temptations of this world are to write for money or write for intellectual praise from any one clique. You are not out to make money or to win acclaim from groups, no matter how well-informed or intelligent. You are out on a voyage of self-discovery, which only indirectly must net you money whereby to survive, and praise whereby to buoy you up. But these should not be goals, only subsidiary rewards along the way. The best reward is in getting to know yourself better as time passes, to enjoy each day and the elation that comes from finally nearing and touching the truth as you see it.

Age 42, “The Story of a Writer,” Story of... (TV Series), 1962

Student: Mr. Bradbury, how much did you make in your early years of writing?

Bradbury: The first year I made nothing. The second year I made nothing. The third year I made $10. The fourth year I made $40.

I remember these. I got these indelibly stamped in there.

The fifth year I made $80. Sixth year, I made $200. Seventh year, I made $800. Eighth year, $1,200. Ninth year, $2,000. Tenth year, $4,000. Eleventh year, $8,000.

Student: How does an artist keep going during those early years of low income?

Bradbury: Just get a part time job — anything that’s halfway decent — usher in a theater...

Unless you’re a madman — you can’t make do in the art field. You’ve gotta be inspired and mad and excited and love it more than anything else In the world.

And to hell with the relatives. And If any girl doesn’t like what you’re doing, out of your life. And if any of your friends, male friends, make fun of you, to hell with them. Out. Out.

And then you get rid of all the relatives at once. Immediately. No more Thanksgiving dinners. [Laughs]

But, it has to be this kind of “By God I’ve gotta do it. I’ve simply gotta do it.” And if you are not this excited, you can’t win.

I worry about rejection, but not too much. The real fear isn’t rejection, but that there won’t be enough time in your life to write all the stories you have in you.

So every time I put a new one in the mail, I know I’ve beaten death again.

Age 47, “Ray Bradbury,” by Frank Filosa, 1967, (Collected in ‘On Being a Writer,’ by Bill Strickland, Writer’s Digest Books, 1989)

Interviewer: Could you describe a typical day, your process of writing?

Bradbury: I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is only valid when it is immediate and passionate; when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it. There’s no difference between a short story and life. Surprise is where creativity comes. Allow your subconscious to come out into the light and say what it has to say. Let your characters have their way. Let your secret life be lived.

Then at your leisure, in the succeeding weeks, months or years, you let the story cool off and then, instead of rewriting, you relive it. If you try to rewrite, which is a cold exercise, you’ll wind up with all kinds of Band-aids on your story, which people can see. It’s very important that a story have a skin around it just as we have a skin. A story must have the same sort of life we have though it is shorter. It has this fantastic entity to itself, a need to run to its end and you just have to let it go.

The average young person you meet today seems to have the motto, “If at first you don’t succeed, stop right there.” They want to start at the top of their profession and not to learn their art on the way up. That way they miss all the fun.

If you write a hundred short stories and they’re all bad, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You fail only if you stop writing.

I’ve written about 2,000 short stories; I’ve only published about 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.

You can get along on a very small amount of money. You can give up clothes. You can give up movies and theater. You can eat Kraft Dinner every day of your life. I’m a student of Kraft Dinner. I’m a specialist in Campbell’s Tomato Soup. … I’m the cheapest freeloader in the history of mankind. My idea of a real meal is to sit down with a can of tomato soup, a couple glasses of milk, and a half a pound of crackers.

I went through a record of expenses I kept during my first year of marriage. At that time I was making about $30 a week writing, and my wife was making $35 at a job to support us so I could get my writing done. We’d go down to Ocean Park at night and have a couple of hot dogs and a Coke. We’d go through the penny arcade, and for 32 cents we’d have a magnificent evening.

If you have someone who cares about you, it’s very easy to give up things. If you’re alone, you buy things to compensate for your loneliness.

Money is not important. The material things are not important. Getting the work done beautifully and proudly is important. If you do that, strangely enough, the money will come as a just reward for work beautifully done. A tape recorder, an automobile, they don’t really belong to you. What really belongs to you? Yourself, you. That’s all you’ll ever have.

Bradbury: In the last seven years I’ve turned down 15 TV series offers I could have had on my own. I choose to stay free and float easily and keep an eye on myself. A writer must have the firm, hard ability to turn his eye inward upon himself. You write because it’s an adventure to watch it come out of your hands. The publicity is pleasant, but it never belongs to you. You’re never quite convinced the name on that printed page is you. Again you’re tuned back on your hidden self, aren’t you? That’s all you’ll ever have. One’s own thoughts, these are the most important things. Not the thoughts of others, because you’ll never understand them. You’ll never understand another writer. You’ll never understand your wife or your children or your best friends. You may try to but you can only understand them through yourself. You see a lot of people around who are trying to understand other people, to find out what makes them tick. But they are looking away from the true object in their creativity. They should ask, “What makes me tick?” They, not others, are the true object.

Interviewer: Is that why you write? To understand yourself?

Bradbury: I know this now. I didn’t know then.

Interviewer: Do you think a writer’s object changes as he goes along? He starts out writing for one reason and continues for others?

Bradbury: I think he starts out with mistaken concepts and then he falls into the prime causes as he writes. He digs those out of the subconscious. He nails himself to the cross of his typewriter. He must crucify himself in order to discover himself.

Age 48, “The Illustrated Bradbury,” CBC (Telescope), January 9, 1969

 I write books about burning books so that people won’t burn books.

It’s that simple.

I write stories about people destroying themselves so that people won’t destroy themselves. I write stories about people being prejudiced so that people will not be prejudiced.

It’s always the reverse. Any negative story that I do has a positive offprint. What you take away from it should be the positive that is printed from the negative.

So, I’m not predicting these futures. I’m writing the story so those futures won’t happen. I’m trying to shape the future by being critical of it. I’m trying to be as honest about our violence as I can be so that the violence won’t occur.

I think the greatest thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world is the invention of the motion picture camera and projector.

I think more good has come into the world because of the fact that, with a bit of film and with these science-fictional machines, we are able to be black when we’re white, to be female when we’re male, male when we’re female, to become a Catholic for two hours when we’re a Jew, to be a Jew for a few hours when we’re a Muslim, and discover suddenly that across that wall of flesh, and sex, and religion, and politics, are human beings.

When you see a film like War and Peace — the Russian version which has just been made, six hours long — and when you come out the other end, you’re in tears, and you suddenly say, “My God, why didn’t I think? Why haven’t I thought more often? The Russians are people! They’re not symbols. They’re not automatically an enemy with a capital E.” Just as we, on this side, are not the enemy with a capital E.

We’re two groups of people on a miraculous world who know nothing of how we got here, who know nothing of where we’re going. So shouldn’t we fuse somewhere along the line? Forget the labels. We must.

Because there’s only one race, essentially, in this world — one race of people, three billion strong. And these petty wars, these petty labelings, these things whereby we scarify our own flesh, are ridiculous.

So the motion picture device is a machine that I admire and want to work with, so that I can teach more people how to be black and yellow and red and white and human.

Because humanity is not a shape, or a color, or a size. It’s an essence.

We are the tension-collecting animals of this world. We are that particular creature who decides to put away violence most of the time. ... We save things. We are the only creature in the world that does this. Every other animal acts in the instant to destroy or run from destruction. We choose not to do so. We build walls; we build cities.

And so, inside these cities, inside these walls, we need artists — we need people, like myself, who take hold of a piece of reality and say, “This is what it is.”

We’ve saved up attention for tears, so I, as a writer, come along and try to help you cry at the right time. We save up attention for laughter — perhaps for our silly politicians — and I come along as a writer and help you to laugh. We save up tensions of murdering. The wonderful fact about civilization is that most people do not murder, that most of us are peace-loving, that we do make do in the best sense. So I come along with a story and enable you, for an hour, to murder — so that the next day you don’t have to do it in reality.

Nietzsche puts it beautifully: “We have art that we do not die of reality.” Reality is too much with us.

I think we know all of the basic facts of life, each of us. We know too much about death. We know too much about age. We know too much about love that sometimes fails us. People do go away. People do vanish. Friends go off over the world and never come back. Our children finally go out into the world on their own. All of us, finally, leave the fact of existence.

What I try to do is go to my typewriter and, many days, experiment with words to find out what my tension is. Do I need to laugh or cry on a particular day? I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know.

So I begin to type any word that comes into my mind: the dwarf, the night, the lake, the wind, a time machine.

And then I say to myself, “Why have you put that word down there? Why have you written ‘the nursery,’ for instance, on the typewriter? What kind of nursery? Where?” A nursery in the past? No. The present? No. What about the future? What would a nursery be like in the future?

Well, it would be automated. It would provide you with an environment, let’s say, so that you could go into that nursery and command it to take you to South America, or Africa, or the North Pole — and suddenly you’re surrounded by the three dimensions and color of that environment. All right, put your children in such an environment. Show that environment to the parents. What does this do to the family relationship?

And suddenly you’re off and flying — all because you dared to put on paper the words “The Nursery.” You didn’t even know the story was in you, but you go with it.

Age 52, “Ray Bradbury: On Hitchcock and Other Magic of the Screen,” by Arnold R. Kunert, Journal of Popular Culture, 1973 (Interview took place in 1972)

Everything I’ve done is flawed. Most of what is written or has been written over the years is flawed in some way. Moby Dick is flawed. Shakespeare’s plays are flawed, full of carbuncles, acne, and pimples. They just happen to be brilliant and eternal.

So, what the hell! You go with your own flaws. It’s part of growing. Getting accustomed to the way you look is growing. We would all like to be Steve Reeves and lift 400 pounds, I suppose, but that’s not our destiny.

Some of my literary children are very common and plain. Some are quite beautiful with moles on their cheeks. I really have a very relaxed attitude toward my screenplays, my plays, my novels, and so on.

Age 53, “Day at Night: Ray Bradbury,” Interview by James Day, CUNY TV, January 21, 1974

The ability to fantasize is the ability to survive. The ability to fantasize is the ability to grow.

Boys and girls at the age of 10, 11, 12, 13, right on up through, the most important time of their day or especially at night before going to sleep is dreaming themselves into becoming something and to being something.

So when you’re a child you begin to dream yourself into a shape. And then you run into the future and try to become that shape. When I was 10, 11, 12, I began to dream of becoming a writer, and the rest of my life has been the real task of shaping myself to that boyhood thing.

I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for 25 years now, which reads: “Don’t think.” You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. You collect up a lot of things there. You do a lot of thinking away from your typewriter, but at the typewriter you should be living. It should be a living experience.

The worst thing you do when you think is lie. You can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did. What you’re trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself, find out who you really are, and try not to lie — try to tell the truth all the time.

The only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional, and getting it out of yourself — making lists of things that you hate and things that you love. You write about these, then, intensely. When it’s over, then you can think about it. Then you can look at whether it works or doesn’t work: “Something’s missing here.” And then, if something’s missing, you go back and re-emotionalize that so it’s all of a piece.

But thinking is to be a corrective in our life. It’s not supposed to be the center of our lives. Living is supposed to be the center of our lives. Being is supposed to be the center — with correctives around, which hold us, like the skin holds our blood and our flesh in. But our skin is not a way of life. The way of our living is the blood pumping through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know. And the intellect doesn’t really help you very much there. You should get on with the business of living.

The typewriter should be an Ouija board. Your hands move on it and reveal things about yourself you don’t know.

For instance, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, my character Montag is myself, discovering me. There are those sides of our character which are destructive, and you bring them out in the open, and then you find ways of becoming creative. So the character of Montag is a totalitarian who discovers he’s burning not just books, but ideas. Then he sets out in search of rediscovering himself — discovering how to read, and how to be alive through reading. And then he gives up his profession and becomes a destroyer of the destroyers, and comes out on the right side of the situation.

Bradbury: I use the library the same way I describe the creative process as a writer. I don’t go in with lists of things to read. I go in blindly and reach up on shelves and take down books and open them and fall in love immediately. And if I don’t fall in love that quickly — shut the book, back on the shelf — find another book and fall in love with it. You can only go with loves in this life.

Interviewer: What about reading lists?

Bradbury: They can’t help you most of the time. You’ve got to prod around everywhere. People don’t have any fun because they don’t ever go in the children’s section, but I go over in the children’s section all the time. I try to keep up on what’s being done in every field. Most children’s books are ten times more enjoyable than the average American novel right now.

So I looked on the shelves of the children’s library years ago, and I said, “I want to lean cheek by jowl, shoulder to shoulder, with my real heroes: Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe.” And as a result of this kind of emotional thing — rejecting all the modern American novelists, most of them in the last 20 years — I have become a father to a lot of children, and these books are indeed leaning against the shoulders of good old Charlie Dickens and Mark Twain.

Interviewer: Some of your stories seem almost to be a protest against the overwhelming mediocrity of life. And yet I’ve seen you defend mediocrity, defend the junk of life as part of its joy.

Bradbury: I think we have to have every kind of knowledge there is. In order to become excellent, you first have to be mediocre — which only means “medium,” anyway. A lot of people use it very pejoratively, thinking that it means “poor.” It doesn’t mean “poor” at all; it just means “medium.”

I believe in raising children with all these fabulous junks, because I was raised on them. I found they were good food, and they helped me to grow. It’s like putting blood manure on roses — you have to have a little of everything.

You can’t appreciate Shakespeare until you’ve read Edgar Rice Burroughs. And you need both of them in your life. I spend my evenings wildly changing styles, from reading Shakespeare at the start of the evening to reading James Bond at the end of it. There’s room in your head for all this. It’s not going to contaminate you. It’s not going to corrupt you. And it gives you, then, such a complete education.

Age 59, “Interview with Ray Bradbury: An Earthbound Traveler,” by Stephen Banker, The Washington Post, September 9, 1979

The reason I shift gears constantly, why I’m doing an opera, why I’ve done essays, why I’ve written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays... is so I will have new ways of failing.

This means becoming a student again. I believe in creative failing — to continue to write poems that fail and fail and fail until a day comes when you’ve got a thousand poems behind you and you’re relaxed and you finally write a good poem.

Interviewer: You have said that libraries played a large part in your education. How so?

Bradbury: Even as a child, I found libraries enchanting. They were watering places, jungle country. I loved libraries at night, the old-fashioned ones where you were surrounded by shadows. And there were pools of green illumination -- from those wonderful green-shaded lamps that were on every table -- where you could go to drink. You get the books off the shelf and smell the pages: elephant India and the incenses of Madras, the paprikas and cinnamons of ancient Egypt. You take the books, you lie there in the pools of light and you drink life. That is how intensely I have loved libraries.

When I graduated from high school, there was no chance of my going to college, so I put myself into the downtown Los Angeles library and graduated from there when I was 28.

Interviewer: You made out your own course of study?

Bradbury: I read everything that I could in every section. I gave myself an education in art history, philosophy, theology, the short story, the mystery story, essays, poetry, you name it. In some places, not very deep. In other places, complete. I just ran amok. When I found an author who enchanted me — like Somerset Maugham, one of the happiest accidents of my life — I read everything. I ramble libraries, I don’t plan anything. I just climb the stacks like a chimpanzee.

We write science fiction because it puts us at one remove from the reality we exist in. If I sat down today and did a story on what automobiles have done to us — they’ve killed 2 million so far and they would kill another 2 million every year — that would be a bore because we already know it.

If I were going to write about that problem, I’d put it ahead 40 or 60 years and do a story like “The Pedestrian,” in which a man is arrested and taken to an insane asylum because he goes for a walk at night.

It’s very much like the old legend of Perseus and Medusa. Medusa was very real, Medusa is now. Perseus had a bronze shield, which is the future. He wants to kill Medusa, but if you look at her she will freeze you. That is what now does, it freezes us so we can’t move. So what do you do? You look in the bronze shield, which is a mirror. You see where Medusa is, and you reach behind you with your sword and you cut off Medusa’s head.

That’s what science fiction is. It’s Perseus and Medusa and the shield.

Age 65, “Ray Bradbury’s Nostalgia for the Future,” by Timothy Perrin, Writer’s Digest, February 1986, (Collected-In: Just Open a Vein, Re-titled as “Ray Bradbury’s Children,” Edited by William Brohaugh, 1987)

I began to get really good after ten years.

I started when I was twelve and when I was twenty-two I wrote a short story called ‘The Lake.’

It was about a real little girl I knew when I was eight or nine years old. She went into the lake and she never came out. That stayed in my mind until I was twenty-two and then I remembered. When I finished that story, I burst into tears and I knew that I had turned a corner in my life, that I had dredged up something. From that time on, I began to go deeper and deeper and deeper.

All of the good, weird stories I’ve written are based on things I’ve dredged out of my subconscious. That’s the real stuff. Everything else is fake.

Age 72, “Bradbury Still Believes In Heat Of ‘Fahrenheit 451,’” by Misha Berson, The Seattle Times, March 12, 1993

The problem in our country isn’t with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us — it’s all junk, all trash, tidbits of news.

The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Age 76, “Bradbury: An Optimist,” by Paul Freeman, San Mateo County Times, January 28, 1997

The people who have mental blocks are the people who do things they shouldn’t be doing. The people who take screenplays they shouldn’t write or books they shouldn’t write — they’re going to wind up with dry spells, because their subconscious says, ‘I’m going to cut off the water works!’

Age 79, “An Interview With Ray Bradbury,” by Devin D. O’Leary, Alibi, 1999

Interviewer: What purpose does it serve to read things that aren’t real?

Bradbury: It makes us dream and it makes us accomplish. Einstein had to dream first, didn’t he, before he wrote his theorem? Darwin the same way. The Wright brothers had dreams of flying. They lay in bed at night at the end of the 19th century and said, “I wonder how we can put wings on our bicycles?” And they finally did it. You’ve got to read myths—Greek myths, Roman myths, Egyptian—and you have to dream yourself into being. The purpose of fiction is not to nail you to the ground as facts do, but to take you to the edge of the cliff and kick you off so you build your wings on the way down.

Age 83, “Ray Bradbury Interview,” Barnes & Noble, Summer 2003

Every day at 9:00 a.m., for two hours, I begin a new short story, sometimes finishing it, or write an essay or poem. This routine has continued for sixty-five years.

Age 88, “A Literary Legend Fights for a Local Library,” by Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times, June 19, 2009

Libraries raised me.

I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Age 90, “Q&A: Ray Bradbury,” by Rachel Goldstein, Time, August 23, 2010

All of my life, I’ve jumped off the cliff and built my wings. It works every single time. It never fails.

This post is part of a growing collection:

The creative life is hard. So I’m finding what great artists had to say about it.

I’m reading, watching, and listening to everything I can find: interviews, letters, speeches, documentaries, essays, and books.

What follows are my favorite things I’ve found so far from people in:

Writing (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry):

• Ray Bradbury

• Maurice Sendak (coming soon)

Music

• Björk

• Jimi Hendrix (coming soon)

• Miles Davis (coming soon)

• Iggy Pop (coming soon)

• Sade (coming soon)

Film, Theater, TV

• Charlie Kaufman (coming soon)

• Bryan Cranston (coming soon)

• David Lynch (coming soon)

Visual Arts (Painting, Photography, Sculpting)

• Alberto Giacometti (coming soon)

• Claude Monet (coming soon)

Over a year and a half ago, before I started Creative Truths, I spent months reading, watching, and listening to every interview, letter, and speech Ray Bradbury gave that I could possibly find. This ended up totaling nearly 300,000 words, none of which came from his novels, short stories, or other fiction.

I wanted to share what I found. But I felt like what I found was too valuable to risk ruining with my own clumsy language.

So I figured, why not assemble the quotes into a conversation he never had, with questions I invented. I could use his quotes as the answers and arrange everything to present his ideas the best possible way I could.

Today, I’ve decided to write the book I was scared to write. It will be the complete portrait of Bradbury’s creative philosophy.

I think I will call it: Ray Bradbury: How to Live a Creative Life.

What follows is my first attempt to write the book I didn’t realize I would end up making. I hope it’s good enough to hold you over while I write the full version for you.

— Spencer, March 17, 2026

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