SOURCE: "Run Fast, Stand Still, or The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or New Ghosts from Old Minds," in How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, & Science Fiction, Writer's Digest Books, 1987, pp. 11-19.

In this essay, Bradbury explains how he wrote many of his short stories, claiming that they evolved out of personal experiences and fears.

Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next—life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat...