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Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of our minds like shipwrecks on the sea bed.
J. G. Ballard
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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
Mind
Dreams
Surviving
Like
Deep
Waters
Memories
Thrive
Huge
Staying
Dark
Decades
Water
Bed
Dream
Sea
Shipwrecks
Power
Minds
Shipwreck
More quotes by J. G. Ballard
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
If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends. At Eden-Olympia work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work.
J. G. Ballard
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
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
It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead.
J. G. Ballard
Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.
J. G. Ballard
Nagasaki destroyed by the magic of science is the nearest man has yet approached to the realization of dreams that even during the safe immobility of sleep are accustomed to develop into nightmares of anxiety.
J. G. Ballard
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
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
J. G. Ballard
I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.
J. G. Ballard
Maybe you are a poet and a dreamer, but don't you realize that those two species are extinct now?
J. G. Ballard
Everywhere you look - Britain, the States, western Europe - people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves. That's a mistake - a certain level of crime is part of the necessary roughage of life. Total security is a disease of deprivation.
J. G. Ballard
A general rule: if enough people predict something, it won't happen.
J. G. Ballard
I felt the pressure of imagination against the doors of my mind was so great that they were going to burst.
J. G. Ballard
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
J. G. Ballard
Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.
J. G. Ballard
Perhaps the future belongs to magic, and it's we women who control magic.
J. G. Ballard
A ton of Proust isn’t worth an ounce of Ray Bradbury.
J. G. Ballard
Put a higher value on yourself. Being hyper-realistic about everything is too simple a get-out.
J. G. Ballard
Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.
J. G. Ballard
