Modern Quotes by J. G. Ballard

8 Modern quotes by J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard captures the unsettling edge of contemporary society in eight terse lines. His dystopian sensibility offers a stark, thought‑provoking snapshot of the present.

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The suburbs dream of violence.

J. G. Ballard

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The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with…

J. G. Ballard

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People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city,…

J. G. Ballard

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When the modern movement began, starting perhaps with the paintings of Manet and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, what distinguished the…

J. G. Ballard

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Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.

J. G. Ballard

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I think of science fiction as being part of the great river of imaginative fiction that has flowed through English literature, probably…

J. G. Ballard

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Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment,…

J. G. Ballard

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For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at…

J. G. Ballard

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More by J. G. Ballard

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those…

J. G. Ballard

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There are some people, who place enormous value on their home and feel that it defines them, that a stain on the carpet is…

J. G. Ballard

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A reality that is electronic... Once everybody's got a computer terminal in their home, to satisfy all their needs, all the domestic needs, there'll…

J. G. Ballard

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If you're against globalisation, it doesn't achieve much by sort of bombing the head offices of Shell or Nestle. You unsettle people much more…

J. G. Ballard

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The suburbs dream of violence.

J. G. Ballard

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I made a very slatternly mother, notably unkeen on housework, unaware that homes need to be cleaned now and then, and too often to…

J. G. Ballard

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I was in Shanghai when the Japanese invaded China. I was there in Shanghai when, the morning after Pearl Harbor, they seized Shanghai.

J. G. Ballard

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Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will helpthe inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out…

J. G. Ballard

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Perhaps the future belongs to magic, and it's we women who control magic.

J. G. Ballard

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Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

J. G. Ballard

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I work for three or four hours a day, in the late morning and early afternoon. Then I go out for a walk and…

J. G. Ballard

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Even one's own home is a kind of anthology of advertisers, manufacturers, motifs and presentation techniques. There's nothing 'natural' about one's home these days.…

J. G. Ballard

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I was born in the city's general hospital on November 15, 1930, and we lived at 31 Amherst Avenue in the western suburbs. It…

J. G. Ballard

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I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. A Buick radiator grille is…

J. G. Ballard

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Orwell's '1984' convinced me, rightly or wrongly, that Marxism was only a quantum leap away from tyranny. By contrast, Huxley's 'Brave New World' suggested…

J. G. Ballard

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