Zig Ziglar Quotes American - Author November 6, 1926 - November 28, 2012 What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. Zig Ziglar Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. Zig Ziglar Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude. Zig Ziglar You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win. Zig Ziglar If people like you, they'll listen to you, but if they trust you, they'll do business with you. Zig Ziglar The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. Zig Ziglar With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt. Zig Ziglar Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That's success. Zig Ziglar Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for. Zig Ziglar You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure. Zig Ziglar People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily. Zig Ziglar Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome. Zig Ziglar You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness. Zig Ziglar You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Zig Ziglar Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining - it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn't solve any problems. Zig Ziglar Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur. Zig Ziglar Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage. Zig Ziglar The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist. Zig Ziglar When you catch a glimpse of your potential, that's when passion is born. Zig Ziglar Take time to be kind and to say 'thank you.' Zig Ziglar There are no traffic jams on the extra mile. Zig Ziglar Outstanding people have one thing in common: An absolute sense of mission. Zig Ziglar It's not the situation, but whether we react negative or respond positive to the situation that is important. Zig Ziglar Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. Zig Ziglar Yesterday ended last night. Today is a brand-new day. Zig Ziglar You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want. Zig Ziglar When you encourage others, you in the process are encouraged because you're making a commitment and difference in that person's life. Encouragement really does make a difference. Zig Ziglar If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. Zig Ziglar It is true that integrity alone won't make you a leader, but without integrity you will never be one. Zig Ziglar Honesty and integrity are absolutely essential for success in life - all areas of life. The really good news is that anyone can develop both honesty and integrity. Zig Ziglar Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful. Zig Ziglar Isn't it amazing how much stuff we get done the day before vacation? Zig Ziglar People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things - to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today. Zig Ziglar It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through. Zig Ziglar The right quote can inspire people to change their ways. Zig Ziglar Your understanding of what you read and hear is, to a very large degree, determined by your vocabulary, so improve your vocabulary daily. Zig Ziglar Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have. Zig Ziglar Success is dependent upon the glands - sweat glands. Zig Ziglar Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute. Zig Ziglar You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life. Zig Ziglar To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can't stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do 'anything.' If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it. Zig Ziglar I seldom read anything that is not of a factual nature because I want to invest my time wisely in the things that will improve my life. Don't misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with reading purely for the joy of it. Novels have their place, but biographies of famous men and women contain information that can change lives. Zig Ziglar If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost. Zig Ziglar Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes. Zig Ziglar Being productive gives people a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that loafing never can. Zig Ziglar Now's the best time you'll ever have in life to get ahead! Zig Ziglar If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. Zig Ziglar If you don't see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner. Zig Ziglar The person who dumps garbage into your mind will do you considerably more harm than the person who dumps garbage on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your possibilities and lowers your expectations. Zig Ziglar We need to understand the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment is what you do to someone; discipline is what you do for someone. Zig Ziglar Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have. Zig Ziglar The top salesperson in the organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made. Zig Ziglar You are who you are and what you are because of what has gone into your mind. You can change who you are and what you are by changing what goes into your mind. Zig Ziglar Profitability comes from loyalty, productivity, and having a character base from which to work. Zig Ziglar Money is not the most important thing, but when you need it, there are few substitutes. So while I like the things money can buy, I love what money won't buy. It bought me a house but it won't buy me a home. It would buy me a companion but it won't buy me a friend. Zig Ziglar Every choice you make has an end result. Zig Ziglar You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people. Zig Ziglar Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet. Zig Ziglar Every obnoxious act is a cry for help. Zig Ziglar I'm a constant learner. You need to be a constant student because things change and you have to change and grow. And I emphasize the word 'grow.' Zig Ziglar If you go looking for a friend, you're going to find they're very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you'll find them everywhere. Zig Ziglar New information makes new and fresh ideas possible. Zig Ziglar Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you. Zig Ziglar I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don't hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales. Zig Ziglar Send out a cheerful, positive greeting, and most of the time you will get back a cheerful, positive greeting. It's also true that if you send out a negative greeting, you will, in most cases, get back a negative greeting. Zig Ziglar Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. Zig Ziglar Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company. Zig Ziglar Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now. Zig Ziglar A goal properly set is halfway reached. Zig Ziglar If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments. Zig Ziglar Selling is something we do for our clients - not to our clients. Zig Ziglar Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business. Zig Ziglar The problem with pity parties is very few people come, and those who do don't bring presents. Zig Ziglar Dreams grow if you grow. Zig Ziglar I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can't truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles. Zig Ziglar Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings. Zig Ziglar Whether it's eight o'clock in the morning or eight o'clock at night, I always try to greet others before they have a chance to speak to me. Zig Ziglar If you want to earn more, learn more. Zig Ziglar I read for the 'ah-ha's,' the information that makes a light bulb go off in my mind. I want to put information in my mind that is going to be the most beneficial to me, my family and my fellow man - financially, morally, spiritually, and emotionally. Zig Ziglar Some people do really find fault like there's a reward for it. Zig Ziglar When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you. Zig Ziglar The relationships we have with people are extremely important to success on and off the job. Zig Ziglar True success has more components than one sentence or idea can contain. Zig Ziglar Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side. Zig Ziglar I believe it's important that we use names of endearment that reflect a special feeling for the individual involved. Zig Ziglar Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to 'gamble' on an unknown. Zig Ziglar Money won't make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves. Zig Ziglar I took up an offer for me to lose 30 pounds in 30 days. It worked. I lost 30 days! Zig Ziglar If my life has had a theme, I suppose it has been a typical American theme in that, for most of it, I have been looking for happiness and success. Zig Ziglar Time well spent results in more money to spend, more money to save, and more time to vacation. Zig Ziglar We all prospect, and don't even know we're doing it. When you start the dating process, you are actually prospecting for the person you want to marry. When you're interviewing employees, you are prospecting for someone who will best fit your needs. Zig Ziglar If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal. Zig Ziglar You don't drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there. Zig Ziglar Problem-solving becomes a very important part of our makeup as we grow into maturity or move up the corporate ladder. Zig Ziglar A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere. Zig Ziglar You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations. Zig Ziglar U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things. Zig Ziglar Since belief determines behavior, doesn't it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America? Zig Ziglar Do more than you are being paid to do, and you'll eventually be paid more for what you do. Zig Ziglar Fortunately, problems are an everyday part of our life. Consider this: If there were no problems, most of us would be unemployed. Zig Ziglar If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you'll never end up with a nag. Zig Ziglar Just saying you are better than good won't make it so. But, when you understand what it takes to live the better than good life, and you apply yourself, your life will truly be better than good. Zig Ziglar It's not what you've got, it's what you use that makes a difference. Zig Ziglar He climbs highest who helps another up. Zig Ziglar As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others. Zig Ziglar Success must never be measured by how much money you have. Zig Ziglar It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word 'pessimist' was not in our vocabulary at that time. It's a modern 'invention' which I believe we should 'dis-invent.' Zig Ziglar Husbands and wives, first be faithful to each other. Second, keep the romance going all of your life by courting each other every day. Zig Ziglar Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale. Zig Ziglar Personal discipline, when it becomes a way of life in our personal, family, and career lives, will enable us to do some incredible things. Zig Ziglar Remember that failure is an event, not a person. Zig Ziglar New research shows that you will be dead longer than you will be alive. Zig Ziglar People don't buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons. Zig Ziglar I'm so optimistic, I'd go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me. Zig Ziglar It's absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others. Zig Ziglar Fact: If standard of living is your number one objective, quality of life almost never improves. But if quality of life is your number one objective, standard of living invariably improves. Zig Ziglar People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace. Zig Ziglar Courage is on display every day, and only the courageous wring the most out of life. Zig Ziglar You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself. Zig Ziglar The one thing coaches cannot tolerate... is the individual who grows arrogant because he excelled at a lower level and believes he has nothing else to learn. Zig Ziglar In the game of life, before you get anything out, you must put something in! Zig Ziglar I've always taught that a poor economy is the best opportunity for salespeople because the naysayers and grumblers have already given up, leaving more territory, more opportunities to be successful than in a good economy when virtually all salespeople are out there, giving it their best. Zig Ziglar You've got to be before you can do and do before you can have. Zig Ziglar The young athlete who aspires to greatness, generally speaking, learns a number of things from several different coaches. The first one taught him the fundamentals; the second one instilled discipline in him and taught him more of the techniques that must be mastered to excel. Zig Ziglar

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice. Friedrich Schiller Schiller & Goethe were the guiding lights in my childhood long as I remember.

Just have to print the Georgia O'Keeffe quotes to keep with my picture collection. Thanks, Don.

J. G. Ballard Quotes British - Author Born: November 18, 1930 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 I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. A Buick radiator grille is as much a political statement as a Rolls Royce radiator grille, one enshrining a machine aesthetic driven by a populist optimism, the other enshrining a hierarchical and exclusive social order. J. G. Ballard In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom. J. G. Ballard Orwell's '1984' convinced me, rightly or wrongly, that Marxism was only a quantum leap away from tyranny. By contrast, Huxley's 'Brave New World' suggested that the totalitarian systems of the future might be subservient and ingratiating. J. G. Ballard The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not. 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. J. G. Ballard Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute. 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 I made a very slatternly mother, notably unkeen on housework, unaware that homes need to be cleaned now and then, and too often to be found with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. J. G. Ballard Consumerism is so weird. It's a sort of conspiracy we collude in. You'd think shoppers spending their hard-earned cash would be highly critical. You know that the manufacturers are trying to have you on. J. G. Ballard No one in a novel by Virginia Woolf ever filled up the petrol tank of her car. No one in Hemingway's postwar novels ever worried about the effects of prolonged exposure to the threat of nuclear war. J. G. Ballard There are signs, I think, that people aren't satisfied by consumerism: that people resent the fact that the most moral decision in their lives is choosing what colour their next car will be. J. G. Ballard The future is going to be boring. The suburbanisation of the planet will continue, and the suburbanisation of the soul will follow soon after. J. G. Ballard I had a very mixed kind of childhood reading. I read the childhood classics like 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'Chums Annual.' At the same time, I read an enormous number of American comics because Shanghai was an American zone of influence. J. G. Ballard I've decided to recast myself as Utopian. I like this landscape of the M25 and Heathrow. I like airfreight offices and rent-a-car bureaus. I like dual carriageways. When I see a CCTV camera, I know I'm safe. J. G. Ballard There are some people, who place enormous value on their home and feel that it defines them, that a stain on the carpet is a personal defilement. There are others, and I think I am one of them, who are entirely indifferent to where they live. 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 My room is dominated by the huge painting, which is a copy of 'The Violation' by the Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux. The original was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940, and I commissioned an artist I know, Brigid Marlin, to make a copy from a photograph. I never stop looking at this painting and its mysterious and beautiful women. J. G. Ballard I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future. J. G. Ballard People think that by living on some mountainside in a tent and being frozen to death by freezing rain, they're somehow discovering reality, but of course that's just another fiction dreamed up by a TV producer. J. G. Ballard Presumably all obsessions are extreme metaphors waiting to be born. That whole private mythology, in which I believe totally, is a collaboration between one's conscious mind and those obsessions that, one by one, present themselves as stepping-stones. J. G. Ballard Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in change - probably as a matter of self-preservation. What the hell is going to happen next? J. G. Ballard Even one's own home is a kind of anthology of advertisers, manufacturers, motifs and presentation techniques. There's nothing 'natural' about one's home these days. The furnishings, the fabrics, the furniture, the appliances, the TV, and all the electronic equipment - we're living inside commercials. J. G. Ballard To my child's eyes, which had seen nothing else, Shanghai was a waking dream where everything I could imagine had already been taken to its extreme. J. G. Ballard If you're against globalisation, it doesn't achieve much by sort of bombing the head offices of Shell or Nestle. You unsettle people much more by blowing up an Oxfam shop because people can't understand the motive. J. G. Ballard I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul. 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 In March 1943, my parents, four-year-old sister and I were interned with other foreign civilians at Lunghua camp, a former teacher training college outside Shanghai, where we remained until the end of August 1945. J. G. Ballard Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern. J. G. Ballard I've seen descriptions of advanced TV systems in which a simulation of reality is computer-controlled; the TV viewer of the future will wear a special helmet. You'll no longer be an external spectator to fiction created by others, but an active participant in your own fantasies/dramas. J. G. Ballard There were no museums or galleries in Shanghai, but I was very keen on art - I was always sketching and copying, and sometimes I think that my whole career as a writer has been the substitute work of an unfulfilled painter. J. G. Ballard Morality covers our conduct, not what goes on inside our heads. J. G. Ballard I don't think it's possible to touch people's imagination today by aesthetic means. J. G. Ballard There's a logic today that places a greater value on celebrity the less it is accompanied by actual achievement. I don't think it's possible to touch people's imagination today by aesthetic means. J. G. Ballard Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it. J. G. Ballard Boredom is a fearsome prospect. There's a limit to the number of cars and microwaves you can buy. What do you do then? J. G. Ballard I was born in the city's general hospital on November 15, 1930, and we lived at 31 Amherst Avenue in the western suburbs. It was a magical place. There were receptions at the French Club, race meetings at the Shanghai Racecourse, and various patriotic gatherings at the British Embassy on the Bund, the city's glamorous waterfront area. J. G. Ballard An arts degree is like a diploma in origami. And about as much use. J. G. Ballard Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century. 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 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 My father worked, and my mother played bridge. Every time I went out of the house, I was chauffeur-driven with my nanny next to me to stop me being kidnapped. J. G. Ballard At the school I attended, the clergyman who ran the cathedral school in Shanghai would give lines to the boys as a punishment. They expected you to copy out, say, 20 or 30 pages from one of the school texts. But I found that rather than laboriously copying out something from a novel by Charles Dickens, it was easier if I made it up myself. 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. The doctor/psychiatrist figures in my writing are alter egos of a kind, what I would have been had I not become a writer - a personal fantasy that I've fed into my fiction. J. G. Ballard Looking back, it puzzles me that my parents decided to stay in Shanghai when they must have known that war was imminent. But the cotton works were my father's responsibility, and duty then counted for something. 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 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. 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 Burroughs called his greatest novel 'Naked Lunch,' by which he meant it's what you see on the end of a fork. Telling the truth. It's very difficult to do that in fiction because the whole process of writing fiction is a process of sidestepping the truth. I think he got very close to it, in his way, and I hope I've done the same in mine. 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. J. G. Ballard A reality that is electronic... Once everybody's got a computer terminal in their home, to satisfy all their needs, all the domestic needs, there'll be a dismantling of the present broadcasting structure, which is far too limited and limiting. J. G. Ballard I think of science fiction as being part of the great river of imaginative fiction that has flowed through English literature, probably for 400 or 500 years, well predating modern science. J. G. Ballard The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic. J. G. Ballard I could sum up the future in one word, and that word is 'boring.' The future is going to be boring. J. G. Ballard I think it's terribly important to watch TV. I think there's a sort of minimum number of hours of TV a day you ought to watch, and unless you watch three or four hours of TV a day, you're just closing your eyes to some of the most important sort of stream of consciousness that's going on! J. G. Ballard 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 The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. 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 'Crash' is a metaphor for what I see as the dehumanizing elements that are present in the world in which we live. We're distanced by the nature of the society we inhabit from a normal human reaction. 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 Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter. J. G. Ballard I would say that I quite consciously rely on my obsessions in all my work, that I deliberately set up an obsessional frame of mind. In a paradoxical way, this leaves one free of the subject of the obsession. J. G. Ballard I take for granted that for the imaginative writer, the exercise of the imagination is part of the basic process of coping with reality, just as actors need to act all the time to make up for some deficiency in their sense of themselves. J. G. Ballard The Internet is an amazing development. J. G. Ballard I was in Shanghai when the Japanese invaded China. I was there in Shanghai when, the morning after Pearl Harbor, they seized Shanghai. J. G. Ballard It is difficult to remember just how formal middle-class life was in the 1930's and '40s. I wore a suit and tie at home from the age of 18. One dressed for breakfast. One lived in a very formal way, and emotions were not paraded. And my childhood was not unusual. J. G. Ballard I was terribly wounded by my wife's death. J. G. Ballard My upbringing was so middle-class and repressed. It wasn't until I was placed in Lunghua that I met anyone from any other social strata. When I did, I found them colossally vital. J. G. Ballard I only realised why I keep living in Shepperton when I returned to China. All the people who moved there had come from places just like Shepperton, and so they built and lived in houses exactly like these. I now know I was drawn here because, on an unconscious level, Shepperton reminds me of Shanghai. J. G. Ballard I admired anyone who could unsettle people. J. G. Ballard The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand, and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer. 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 During the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence. J. G. Ballard E. Klimov's 'Come and See,' about partisans fighting the Germans in Byelorussia, is the greatest anti-war film ever made. J. G. Ballard In 1949 - my father stayed on in Shanghai after the war. But in 1949, the Communists took over the whole of China, and in fact, my father was caught by the Communists in Shanghai. And he was there for about a year until he was finally able to get out. J. G. Ballard I would love to have been a painter in the tradition of the surrealist painters who I admire so much. J. G. Ballard Novelists should be like scientists, dissecting the cadaver. J. G. Ballard The dream of empire died when Shanghai surrendered without a fight. Even at the age of 11 or 12, I knew that no amount of patriotic newsreels would put the Union Jack jigsaw together again. From then on, I was slightly suspicious of all British adults. J. G. Ballard