Ray Bradbury was once asked to give a speech at the University of Southern California.

He had prepared an astonishing amount of notes and read from them verbatim. Five to ten minutes into his speech, Bradbury looked up to see everyone was half-asleep. He yelled "Attention! Attention", threw his speech on the ground and stomped on it repeatedly. The audience looked up at him wide-eyed. He continued, this time speaking rather than reading.

After this, Bradbury would show up to speaking engagements with a list of metaphors. Each metaphor reminded him of a topic or a story he could riff on for an hour about.

In Listen to The Echoes, a collection of the great science-fiction writers interviews throughout the years, Bradbury shares, "So that's the truth here about public speaking. It has to be like acting, just as natural and wonderful as breathing."