I absolutely love this talk, given by Ray Bradbury, as the the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University in 2001.

I’m attaching it to my blog here as a sort of reminder to come back and watch it again sometime; there’s so much goodness in it.

It also reminds me how much I used to love reading short stories; snippets of life and metaphor (and ideas!) that get into your head before you sleep, making everything whir overnight. J D Salinger’s For Esme with Love and Squalor: and other stories was a favourite collection, which I remember reading on a sun lounger in Spain. Bradbury recommends reading one short story, one poem and one essay each evening. I like his emphasis on variety.

I love, too, his emphasis on surprise. Writing is a surprise. The writing life is a surprise. Life in general is a massive surprise.

And I love his laugh.