Empire of the Sun Quotes

“To his surprise he felt a moment of regret, of sadness that his quest for his mother and father would soon be over. As long as he searched for them he was prepared to be hungry and ill, but now that the search had ended he felt saddened by the memory of all he had been through, and of how much he had changed. He was closer now to the ruined battlefields and this fly-infested truck, to the nine sweet potatoes in the sack below the driver's seat, even in a sense to the detention center, than he would ever be again to his house in Amherst Avenue.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“After a few minutes Jim was forced to admit that he could recognize none of the constellations. Like everything else since the war, the sky was in a state of change. For all their movements, the Japanese aircraft were its only fixed points, a second zodiac above the broken land.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“The dead were buried above ground, the loose soil heaped around them. The heavy rains of the monsoon months softened the mounds, so that they formed outlines of the bodies within them, as if this small cemetery beside the military airfield were doing its best to resurrect a few of the millions who had died in the war. Here and there an arm or a foot protruded from the graves, the limbs of restless sleepers struggling beneath their brown quilts.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“Jim knew that he was awake and asleep at the same time, dreaming of the war and yet dreamed of by the war.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“His mother and father were agnostics, and Jim respected devout Christians in the same way that he respected people who were members of the Graf Zeppelin Club or shopped at the Chinese department stores, for their mastery of an exotic foreign ritual. Besides, those who worked hardest for others, like Mrs. Philips and Mrs. Gilmour and Dr. Ransome, often held beliefs that turned out to be correct.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“Jim watched them eat, his eyes fixed on every morsel that entered their mouth. When the oldest of the four soldiers had finished he scraped some burnt rice and fish scales from the side of the cooking pot. A first-class private of some forty years, with slow, careful hands, he beckoned Jim forward and handed him his mess tin. As they smoked their cigarettes the Japanese smiled to themselves, watching Jim devour the shreds of fatty rice. It was his first hot food since he had left he hospital, and the heat and greasy flavour stung his gums. Tears swam in his eyes. The Japanese soldier who had taken pity on Jim, recognising that this small boy was starving, began to laugh good-naturedly, and pulled the rubber plug from his metal water-bottle. Jim drank the clear, chlorine-flavoured liquid, so unlike the stagnant water in the taps of the Columbia Road. He choked, carefully swallowed his vomit, and tittered into his hands, grinning at the Japanese. Soon they were all laughing together, sitting back in the deep grass beside the drained swimming-pool.”
― J.G. Ballard , Empire of the Sun

“All around them were the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. They lined the verges of the roads and floated in the canals, jammed together around the pillars of the bridges. In the trenches between the burial mounds hundreds of dead soldiers sat side by side with their heads against the torn earth, as if they had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“Dr. Ransome marked the exercises in the algebra textbook and gave him two strips of rice-paper bandage on which to solve the simultaneous equations. As he stood up, Dr. Ransome removed the three tomatoes from Jim's pocket. He laid them on the table by the wax tray.
'Did they come from the hospital garden?'
'Yes.' Jim gazed back frankly at Dr. Ransome. Recently he had begun to see him with a more adult eye. The long years of imprisonment, the constant disputes with the Japanese had made this young physician seem middle-aged. Dr. Ransome was often unsure of himself, as he was of Jim's theft.
'I have to give Basie something whenever I see him.'
'I know. It's a good thing that you're friends with Basie. He's a survivor, though survivors can be dangerous. Wars exist for people like Basie.' Dr. Ransome placed the tomatoes in Jim's hand. 'I want you to eat them, Jim. I'll get you something for Basie.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“Already a sizable traffic jam blocked the Bund. Once again the crush and clutter of Shanghai had engulfed its invaders.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“Every night in Shanghai those Chinese too poor to pay for the burial of their relatives would launch the bodies from the funeral piers at Nantao, decking the coffins with paper flowers. Carried away on the tide, they came back on the next, returning to the waterfront of Shanghai with all the other debris abandoned by the city. Meadows of paper flowers drifted on running tide and clumped in miniature floating gardens around the old men and women, the young mothers and small children, whose swollen bodies seemed to have been fed during the night by the patient Yangtze.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“Say, thanks, Basie!” Jim devoured the potato. He liked Basie’s cubicle. The abundance of objects, even if they were useless, was reassuring, like the abundance of words around Dr. Ransome. The Latin vocabulary and the algebraic terms were useless too, but they helped to make up a world. Basie’s confidence in the future encouraged him.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“If you can find a way of helping people, you'll live off the interest.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“The British were especially good at complaining, something the Dutch and Americans never did.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“Communists. People who don’t want to know the war is over. Remember that, Jim.” “Right . . .” Trying to distract the cabin steward with some more cheerful topic, Jim asked: “Basie, did you see the atom bomb go off? I saw the flash over Nagasaki from Nantao Stadium.” “Say, kid . . .” Basie peered at Jim, puzzled by the calm voice of this bloody-nosed boy. He took a gun rag from the rear windowsill and wiped Jim’s nose. “You saw the atom bomb?” “For a whole minute,”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun