J. G. Ballard Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
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The system of idolatry, invented by modern christianity, far surpasses in absurdity anything that we have ever heard of.
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For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
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Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader's experience. If it's a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it's a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.
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Our approach to economic development must be modern, focused and in tune with the global trend.
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I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
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Being traditional is a choice for me. South Indian families bring up their children with a sense of freedom, self-respect and self-value. We do whatever we have to with earnestness and honesty, including being uninhibited. Yet we hold onto our roots.
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I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
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I need to make things mine. It annoys me to buy something that is imposed on me. When I have a suit made, I go to the Sicilian tailor Alessandro Martorana in Turin. I like shorter jacket sleeves and often fold the cuffs up. It's more modern that way.
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To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought.
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If I'm feeling desperate, I'll go out image-hunting. I'll go to news agents and stand at the rack flicking through magazines or go to second-hand bookshops. And then, bit by bit, like concrete poetry, I start to realise that I am drawn to particular things, and then I start wondering why that is.
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Poetry is the deification of reality.
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If you asked me to sing a modern song, I wouldn't be able to - I can't easily slip into that groove. But if it were a song by Nico or The Velvet Underground, fine.
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Many churches are measuring the wrong things. We measure things like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts. Those things can be counted, but not as easily as offerings.
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In the West, anything that must be hidden is suspect; availability and honesty are interlinked. This clashes irreconcilably with Islam, where the things that are most precious, most perfect and most holy are always hidden: the Kaaba, the faces of prophets and angels, a woman's body, Heaven.
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I try to perform honestly during the fight, and I always remember that I'm a representative of Russia. I try not to bring any aggression. Just honesty.
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It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.
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Everyone sort of sees his own life and times as being ephemeral. One thinks that everything good or important that happened, happened in the past. But I think that seeing scenes that you are used to, but with the heightening effects of poetry, perhaps makes you value your life and times more than you might otherwise do.
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A life in politics is for people who know themselves and know where their own line is between loyalty and honesty.
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I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams;I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams.
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The rare case where the conquered is very satisfied with the conqueror.
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I love to look at The Graduate, or Lawrence of Arabia, or things I had nothing to do with. But you could not get me to go back and watch movies that it was a privilege just to be around them when they were being made.
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There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
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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.
