J.G. Ballard

Quotes

• “Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything ere...”
• “Recently she had become intrigued by the admiring glances of other women. The admiration of her own sex existed on a hig...”
• “Their violence (the jungle wars of the '70s), and all violence for that matter, reflects the neutral exploration of sens...”
• “Miriam - I'll give you any flowers you want!' Rhapsodising over the thousand scents of her body, I exclaimed: 'I'll grow...”
• “These people were the first to master a new kind of late twentieth-century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of a...”
• “However, for all his affection and loyalty towards the animal, the dog would soon be leaving him - they would both be pr...”
• “First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childis...”
• “No one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: …there’s a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not ...”
• “Without knowing it, he had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the ...”
• “the run-down nature of the high-rise was a model of the world into which the future was carrying them, a landscape beyon...”
• “The Thames Shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream th...”
• “If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin...”
• “...reason rationalizes reality for him (Dr. Nathan) as it does for the rest of us, in the Freudian sense of providing a ...”
• “I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, t...”
• “He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs."One rule in life", he ...”
• “They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency...”
• “Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all...”
• “The trouble with you people is that you've been here for thirty million years and your perspectives are all wrong. You m...”
• “Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of ...”
• “Even their insistence on educating their children, the last reflex of any exploited group before it sank into submission...”
• “First wives are a rite of passage into adult life. In many ways it’s important that first marriages go wrong. That’s how...”
• “She had originally agreed to appear naked, but on seeing the cars informed me that she would only appear topless—an inte...”
• “The 90’s map the decades to come – full of invisible technologies that will ‘sub-contract’ many of the functions of the ...”
• “In the post-Warhol era a single gesture such as uncrossing one's legs will have more significance than all the pages in ...”
• “A kind of banalization of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant, ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as pack...”
• “Sex is now a conceptual act, it's probably only in terms of the perversions that we can make contact with each other at ...”
• “In effect, the apartment block was a small vertical city, its two thousand inhabitants boxed up into the sky.j.g.”
• “Jim knew that he was awake and asleep at the same time, dreaming of the war and yet dreamed of by the war.”
• “The house was silent, but somewhere in the garden was a swimming pool filled with unsettled water.”
• “Maybe you are a poet and a dreamer, but don't you realize that those two species are extinct now?”
• “Have you noticed how vocabularies fluctuate in order to cope with our need to justify ourselves?”
• “If we really feared the crash, most of us would be unable to look at a car, let lone drive one.”
• “Almost pedantically, she added: "They're not really bombs-- they're acoustic provocations.”
• “The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented.”
• “Kill a politician and you're tied to the motive that made you pull the trigger.”
• “In the future, violence would clearly become a valuable form of social cement.”
• “The ultimate concept car will move so fast, even at rest, as to be invisible.”
• “Once it gets off the ground into space, all science fiction is fantasy.”
• “So, with all this time on my hands, I decided to start a revolution.”
• “I'm a strong opponent of all religious belief.(Conversations pg 96)”
• “this was an environment built, not for man, but for man's absence.”
• “...the arts and criminality have always flourished side by side.”
• “Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.”
• “Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.”
• “She glanced at her watch, reminding herself who she was.”
• “Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.”
• “Togetherness is beating up an empty elevator.”
• “Sex × Technology = the Future.”