Writer Quotes by J. G. Ballard

18 Writer quotes by J. G. Ballard

Ballard’s 18 quotes pull you into the strange, often unsettling terrain of a writer’s imagination. He balances technical insight with a fascination for the uncanny, giving a compact view of his distinctive voice.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Fiction is a branch of neurology

J. G. Ballard

Image

A ton of Proust isn’t worth an ounce of Ray Bradbury.

J. G. Ballard

Image

Novelists should be like scientists, dissecting the cadaver.

J. G. Ballard

Image

If I don't write, I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy, as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.

J. G. Ballard

Image

But I wouldn't recommend writing. You can be a successful writer and never meet another soul. I'm not sure that's a good…

J. G. Ballard

Image

I've never suffered from writer's block. I have plenty of ideas, sometimes too many. I've always had a strong imagination. If it…

J. G. Ballard

Image

There were no museums or galleries in Shanghai, but I was very keen on art - I was always sketching and copying,…

J. G. Ballard

Image

The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand, and then I type them up on my old electric.…

J. G. Ballard

Image

All through my career I've written 1,000 words a day - even if I've got a hangover. You've got to discipline yourself…

J. G. Ballard

Image

It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a…

J. G. Ballard

Image

I had a very mixed kind of childhood reading. I read the childhood classics like 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'Chums Annual.'…

J. G. Ballard

Image

Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in…

J. G. Ballard

Image

Burroughs called his greatest novel Naked Lunch, by which he meant it's what you see on the end of a fork. He's…

J. G. Ballard

Image

Burroughs called his greatest novel 'Naked Lunch,' by which he meant it's what you see on the end of a fork. Telling…

J. G. Ballard

Image

We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising,…

J. G. Ballard

Image

Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled…

J. G. Ballard

Image

I feel that, in a sense, the writer knows nothing any longer. He has no moral stance. He offers the reader the…

J. G. Ballard

Image

“A lifetime's experience urges me to utter a warning cry: do anything else, take someone's golden retriever for a walk, run away…

J. G. Ballard

Image

Other authors on Writer

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

The suburbs dream of violence.

J. G. Ballard

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

J. G. Ballard

Image

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

J. G. Ballard

Image

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

Image

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

Image