J. G. Ballard Quotes

You're not supposed to have iron bars around you - no one is supposed to have that. You're supposed to fall down hills and get lonely, and find your own food and get wet when it rains. That's what happens when you're alive.

Just about every weekend when I was growing up, we would throw rods and rifles and tents and shovels and pickaxes into the back of the truck and then head off to the side of a mountain or the bottom of a canyon. Hiking, fishing, hunting, rock-hounding: this is how my parents passed the time.

Mountaineering is one of the most difficult sports - we are away from routine life for days, living in tents, and it requires high degree of physical and mental strength.

I've always walked and climbed; spent a lot of time in the arctic and places.

When I began work on my first book, 'The River of Doubt,' which tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt's 1914 descent of an unmapped river in the Amazon rainforest, I thought of it as a tale of adventure, exploration and extraordinary courage.

Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

I've been starting in new places year after year after year. It's just like when I went to Greece or the Philippines. I love when people think I'm a new artist. It's a chance to start over.

I learn something every time I go into the mountains.

I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out.

The appeal of the wild for me is its unpredictability. You have to develop an awareness, react fast, be resourceful and come up with a plan and act on it.

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.

Specifically choose not to take a GPS. Just create a challenge. You can climb Everest or walk across Antarctica with minimal gear and still have that sense of adventure. But in terms of exploration, Google Earth has this world mapped down to the square foot.

I am in love with this world . . . I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

The traveler must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements.

Journey into the beautiful dream that is life...the end is only the beginning.

I went from staring at the same four walls for 21 years to seeing the whole world in just 12 months.

A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, Manling.

If I had the chance to spend a day with Werner Herzog, I would want there to be a canoe involved. I want to be down in Patagonia or something, and kill some kind of wild beast and skin it and gut it and cook it. And then turn its fur into some kind of layer of warmth. And then trek through the hills.

We're all intrigued, in our civilized world that we live in, and curious about how we would get on, on an undiscovered island that is untouched by man.

I do a lot of walking around in game parks, rain forests, places like that, but it's not like I'm camping in them as much as my day walks. I've done that all over the world, not like with a backpack on my back living out in the woods for several days. When I travel abroad, it's more the city that captures my interest.

Like love, travel makes you innocent again.

When you #‎ travel , you experience, in a very practical way, the act of #‎ rebirth .

See your life as a giant adventure. Keep pushing the envelope, and remember that every dream starts off small.

Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain, And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.

Farewell we call to hearth and hall! Though wind may blow and rain may fall. We must away ere the break of day. Far over wood and mountain tall.