Quote

By the eighteenth book, one has a sense of having bricked oneself into a niche, a roosting place for other people's pigeons. I wouldn't recommend it.

J. G. Ballard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

J. G. Ballard
Age: 78 †
Born: 1930
Born: November 15
Died: 2009
Died: April 19
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Shanghai
China
James Graham Ballard
James Graham J. G. Ballard
People
Pigeons
Niche
Recommend
Oneself
Wouldn
Sense
Place
Book
Eighteenth

More quotes by 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 come back in time for a large gin and tonic.
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 thing.
J. G. Ballard
Image
Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.
J. G. Ballard
Image
I felt the pressure of imagination against the doors of my mind was so great that they were going to burst.
J. G. Ballard
Image
There is a British pop group called God. At a recent book signing the lead singer introduced himself and gave me a cassette. I have heard the voice of God.
J. G. Ballard
Image
I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.
J. G. Ballard
Image
Perhaps violence, like pornography, is some kind of an evolutionary standby system, a last-resort device for throwing a wild joker into the game?
J. G. Ballard
Image
I don't think any particular painters have inspired me, except in a general sense. It was more a matter of corroboration. The visual arts, from Manet onwards, seemed far more open to change and experiment than the novel, though that's only partly the fault of the writers. There's something about the novel that resists innovation.
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
Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.
J. G. Ballard
Image
I find wholly baffling the widespread belief today that the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was an immoral act, even possibly a war crime to rank with Nazi genocide.
J. G. Ballard
Image
I came to live in Shepperton in 1960. I thought: the future isn't in the metropolitan areas of London. I want to go out to the new suburbs, near the film studios. This was the England I wanted to write about, because this was the new world that was emerging.
J. G. Ballard
Image
Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter.
J. G. Ballard
Image
Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.
J. G. Ballard
Image
Fiction is a branch of neurology
J. G. Ballard
Image
The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.
J. G. Ballard
Image
God was a clever idea ... The human race came up with a winner there.
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 if you're professional. There's no other way.
J. G. Ballard
Image
Hell is out of fashion --institutional hells at any rate. The populated infernos of the 20th century are more private affairs, the gaps between the bars are the sutures of one's own skull. . .
J. G. Ballard
Image
Sooner or later, all games become serious.
J. G. Ballard