"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
This quote highlights the durability and persistence of reality, emphasizing that even when our beliefs or perceptions may change, objective reality remains constant. Regardless of whether we choose to acknowledge or ignore it, reality continues to exist independently of our personal beliefs or understanding. Essentially, Ballard's words serve as a reminder that despite our subjective experiences and interpretations, the world around us retains its solidity and endurance.
"The real road to hell is paved with adverbs."
This quote by J.G. Ballard emphasizes the importance of strong, effective writing that avoids excessive use of adverbs. In his view, an overreliance on adverbs can lead to weak or bland prose, and indirectly guide writers towards a "road to hell" in terms of engaging, impactful storytelling. Instead, he suggests focusing on strong verbs and concrete nouns that convey emotion and action more powerfully, thereby improving the overall quality of one's writing.
"Ideas are like viruses, they get inside your head whether you want them to or not."
This quote by J.G. Ballard suggests that ideas, much like viruses, can be involuntarily absorbed or internalized. It implies that exposure to new thoughts, concepts, or perspectives can subtly impact one's mind, whether an individual consciously chooses to embrace them or not. In essence, the quote underscores the power of ideas and their potential to shape our understanding and beliefs, often without our awareness.
"Disasters always seem to occur in the most banal and ordinary settings: the intersection of a street, an airport terminal, a shopping mall."
This quote highlights the idea that catastrophes or disasters often happen in seemingly common and unexceptional environments. It suggests that disaster is not exclusive to extraordinary circumstances but can occur anywhere, even in places where we least expect it. This underscores the need for vigilance, preparedness, and resilience in all aspects of life.
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
This quote by J.G. Ballard suggests that exploring beyond the known boundaries, even if it means venturing into the seemingly impossible, is essential for progress and discovery. It encourages us to challenge our own limitations and push ourselves further, ultimately leading to new insights about what we are capable of achieving.
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. The furnishings, the fabrics, the furniture, the appliances, the TV, and all the electronic equipment - we're living inside commercials.
- J. G. Ballard
I've seen descriptions of advanced TV systems in which a simulation of reality is computer-controlled; the TV viewer of the future will wear a special helmet. You'll no longer be an external spectator to fiction created by others, but an active participant in your own fantasies/dramas.
- J. G. Ballard
My room is dominated by the huge painting, which is a copy of 'The Violation' by the Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux. The original was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940, and I commissioned an artist I know, Brigid Marlin, to make a copy from a photograph. I never stop looking at this painting and its mysterious and beautiful women.
- J. G. Ballard
When the modern movement began, starting perhaps with the paintings of Manet and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, what distinguished the modern movement was the enormous honesty that writers, painters and playwrights displayed about themselves. The bourgeois novel flinches from such notions.
- J. G. Ballard
I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. A Buick radiator grille is as much a political statement as a Rolls Royce radiator grille, one enshrining a machine aesthetic driven by a populist optimism, the other enshrining a hierarchical and exclusive social order.
- J. G. Ballard
At the school I attended, the clergyman who ran the cathedral school in Shanghai would give lines to the boys as a punishment. They expected you to copy out, say, 20 or 30 pages from one of the school texts. But I found that rather than laboriously copying out something from a novel by Charles Dickens, it was easier if I made it up myself.
- J. G. Ballard
Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled by many psychiatrists. The doctor/psychiatrist figures in my writing are alter egos of a kind, what I would have been had I not become a writer - a personal fantasy that I've fed into my fiction.
- J. G. Ballard
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