{"id":32820,"date":"2012-06-06T12:05:21","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T16:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=32820"},"modified":"2012-06-06T12:05:21","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T16:05:21","slug":"ray-bradbury-1920%e2%80%932012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/06\/ray-bradbury-1920%e2%80%932012\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Bradbury, 1920\u20132012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Ray_Bradbury.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Ray_Bradbury.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Ray_Bradbury\" width=\"600\" height=\"364\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32821\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Ray_Bradbury.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Ray_Bradbury-300x182.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That\u2019s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. You don\u2019t know\u2014you haven\u2019t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the top of your lungs shout and listen to the echoes. I learned a lesson years ago. I had some wonderful Swedish meatballs at my mother\u2019s table with my dad and my brother and when I finished I pushed back from the table and said, God! That was beautiful. And my brother said, No, it was good. See the difference?<\/p>\n<p>Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you\u2019ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I\u2019ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn\u2019t matter how good it is, or how bad\u2014you did it. At the end of the week you\u2019ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I\u2019ll be damned, it\u2019s been a good year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\u2014Ray Bradbury, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/6012\/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-bradbury\">The Art of Fiction No. 203<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI don\u2019t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That\u2019s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. You don\u2019t know\u2014you haven\u2019t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5460,20537,1132,5029,7782],"class_list":["post-32820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-deaths","tag-in-memoriam","tag-interviews","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-the-art-of-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ray Bradbury, 1920\u20132012 by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 6, 2012 \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That\u2019s a different thing. 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