“For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at least channelled into productive forms, but I doubt it. I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.” ThinkingGivingHumansChildrenSelfPlayMovingFormGamesTechnologyDoubtModernMankindTalentDangerousDestructionSakeMy ChildrenProductiveControlledUnlimitedGrandchildrenSelf DestructionChildren And GrandchildrenPsychopathologyUnlimited Power Author: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.” NovelModernHonestyMovementPaintingNotionStartingEnormousPainterDistinguishedPlaywrightBourgeoisBaudelaire Author:J. G. Ballard
“Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.” ModernHonestHonestyMarkAbsolutes Author:J. G. Ballard
“Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.” ThinkingWorldWritingStatesNovelModernStatementsInnocentContentmentPassagesPerpetualDrunkennessRiteGood HumorRite Of PassageScanningEdginess Author:J. G. Ballard
“Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.” ReligiousCitiesLeaderMagicModernParticularWasteFunctionDesertShoppingCoincidenceTimelessExhaustedVansPyramidsMallsReligious LeadersMotels Author:J. G. Ballard
“The suburbs dream of violence.” WorldDreamAmericaViolenceModernModern WorldSuburbs Book:Kingdom Come Source: Kingdom Come
“People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology.” PeopleWayKindMaySeemsTogetherCitiesTechnologyModernAliensItalianBusTrafficOld FashionedTogethernessJamRenaissanceSocializingQueuesModern TechnologyMinglingTraffic JamCongestionEscalatorsItalian RenaissanceTraffic Congestion Author:J. G. Ballard
“The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai.” WorldWellsArtWarWholeModernChildhoodMovementStrangePaintingKeysOffersThreatNuclearAbstractAmbiguityNuclear WarAbstract ArtShanghaiSurrealistCubismDislocation Author:J. G. Ballard
