Zen in the Art of Writing

by Ray Bradbury

I intend my plays to be first entertaining and grand fun that will stimulate, provoke, terrify, and, one hopes, amuse. This, I think, is important, to tell a good story, to write the passions well, on to the end. Let the residue come when the plays are over and the crowd goes home. Let the audience wake in the night and say, Oh that’s what he’s up to! Or the next day cry, He means us! He means now! Our world, our problems, our delights and our despairs! I do not want to be a snobbish lecturer, a grandiloquent do-gooder, or a boring reformer. I do wish to run, seize this greatest time in all the history of man to be alive, stuff my senses with it, eye it, touch it, listen to it, smell it, taste it, and hope that others will run with me, pursuing and pursued by ideas and ideas-made machines.