One of my favorite authors has passed into the great beyond. Yet another great person that did not go to college. Well not formally, instead he squirreled himself away in of all things a library. And read for the better part of 10 years. He stated he didn't graduate from college, he graduated from the library.

RIP Ray Bradbury.

He advocated writing spontaneously, frequently, and with passion, reiterating the necessity of loving your craft.

Notable quotes from Mr. Bradbury.

"There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel." ( I'm hoping he was wrong about this one)

"Don't talk about it; write."

"Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember."

"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."

"I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it."

"Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for."

“You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done. For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality. How so? Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come. All arts, big and small, are the elimination of waste motion in favor of the concise declaration. The artist learns what to leave out. His greatest art will often be what he does not say, what he leaves out, his ability to state simply with clear emotion, the way he wants to go. The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers.”

"Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down."

And a quote on death and dying.

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there."

The world is a better place for having had Ray Bradbury in it.