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?
Interpretation
The quote reflects an interest in change as a vital part of life, contrasting with a focus on static social narratives.
In this quote, J. G. Ballard expresses his fascination with the concept of change as opposed to the traditional social novel which often relies on static settings and characters. He implies that a dynamic and ever-evolving environment is crucial for survival and understanding the future, suggesting that change is not only an external reality but also an internal necessity that drives his curiosity and creativity.
In practice
During a book discussion, this quote can set the stage for a debate on the evolution of narrative forms in literature.
Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.
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.
Au revoir, jewelled alligators and white hotels, hallucinatory forests, farewell.
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.
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.
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.
We all have the chance to create a world where extreme poverty is the exception rather than the rule.
In order to make a change, I have to exist in a traditionally homophobic space such as hip-hop. If I were to just be this queer rapper who only spoke to queer kids... I don't think I could as effectively make a change for another young, black, queer kid growing up in Texas.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
I hope the day will never come when the American nation will be the champion of the status quo. Once that happens, we shall have forfeited, and rightly forfeited, the support of the unsatisfied, of those who are the victims of inevitable imperfections, of those who, young in years or spirit, believe that they can make a better world and of those who dream dreams and want to make their dreams to come true.
Quitting, for me, means not giving up, but moving on; changing direction not because something doesn’t agree with you, but because you don’t agree with something. It’s not a complaint, in other words, but a positive choice, and not a stop in one’s journey, but a step in a better direction. Quitting-whether a job or a habit-means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your dreams.
Failure is never fatal. But failure to change can and might be.
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