The Kindness of Women Quotes

“As Miriam released my hand I felt that she and Midwife Bell had returned to a more primitive world, where men never intruded and even their role in conception was unknown. Here the chain of life was mother to daughter, daughter to mother. Fathers and sons belonged in the shadows with the dogs and livestock, like the retriever growling at Midwife Bell's unfamiliar car from the window of my neighbours' living room.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“With its passive and unobtrusive despotism, the camera governed the smallest spaces of our lives. Even in the privacy of our own homes we had all been recruited to play our parts in what were little more than real-life commercials. As we cooked in our kitchens we were careful to follow the manufacturer's instructions, as we made love in our bedrooms we embraced within a familiar repertoire of gestures and affections. The medium of film had turned us all into minor actors in an endlessly running daytime serial. In the future, airliners would crash and presidents would be assassinated within agreed conventions as formalised as the coronation of a tsar.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“Recently she had become intrigued by the admiring glances of other women. The admiration of her own sex existed on a higher and more intense plane than anything men could offer, like the romantic rivalries of sisters. Together, women formed a conspiracy of glances entirely exchanged behind the backs of their menfolk.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“The flash lights irritated the women's eyes, but in the sudden glare their faces, so empty of expression when they had sex, at last came alive, and I saw two bluecollar housewives who had ditched their husbands and aspired to the most bourgeois of lives.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“He turned his back on his mother, but the dead battlefield surrounded him on everyside. Deliberately scuffing his polished shoes, he kicked the cartridge cases at the sleeping soldiers.

I cupped my hands over my ears, trying to catch the sound that would wake them.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“It had not occurred to me that sexual games could be played with an unborn child.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“I often wondered if she was accusing me of starting the war, though in Olga's eyes that would have been the least of my crimes.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“As I left, promising to mention her to my father, Olga said: "Now you can play hide-and-seek in the whole world.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women