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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 come back in time for a large gin and tonic.
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
Four
Gin
Hours
Afternoon
Three
Large
Back
Early
Come
Late
Work
Walk
Time
Walks
Morning
Tonic
More quotes by 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
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
The human race sleepwalked to oblivion, thinking only of the corporate logos on it's shroud.
J. G. Ballard
People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.
J. G. Ballard
Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.
J. G. Ballard
Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.
J. G. Ballard
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
Surrender to a logic more powerful than reason.
J. G. Ballard
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
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.
J. G. Ballard
One of the things I took from my wartime experiences was that reality was a stage set... the comfortable day-to-day life, school, the home where one lives and all the rest of it... could be dismantled overnight.
J. G. Ballard
Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.
J. G. Ballard
What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths.
J. G. Ballard
If you can smell garlic, everything is all right.
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
Everywhere - all over Africa and South America - you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There's a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they're terrifying, because they are the death of the soul. This is the prison this planet is being turned into.
J. G. Ballard
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
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
A general rule: if enough people predict something, it won't happen.
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