J.g. Ballard Quotes

In the future, violence would clearly become a valuable form of social cement.

~ J.g. Ballard

So, with all this time on my hands, I decided to start a revolution.

~ J.g. Ballard

He walked into the bathroom, wincing at himself in the mirror, that always more tired older brother.

~ J.g. Ballard

No one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: …there’s a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itself like the surface of a new planet. JG Ballard, 2004

~ J.g. Ballard

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

If we really feared the crash, most of us would be unable to look at a car, let lone drive one.

~ J.g. Ballard

However, for all his affection and loyalty towards the animal, the dog would soon be leaving him - they would both be present at a celebratory dinner when they reached the roof, he reflected with a touch of gallows-humour, but the poodle would be in the pot.

~ J.g. Ballard

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

The marriage of reason and nightmare that dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia…In a sense, pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other, in the most urgent and ruthless way.

~ J.g. Ballard

The Thames Shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream that slid past Chelsea Marina, but a rush of ugly water that had scented the open sea and was ready to make a run for it.

~ J.g. Ballard

A kind of banalization of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant, ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as packet soup.

~ J.g. Ballard

Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.

~ J.g. Ballard

Kill a politician and you're tied to the motive that made you pull the trigger.

~ J.g. Ballard

Almost pedantically, she added: They're not really bombs-- they're acoustic provocations.

~ J.g. Ballard

In the post-Warhol era a single gesture such as uncrossing one's legs will have more significance than all the pages in War and Peace.

~ J.g. Ballard

this was an environment built, not for man, but for man's absence.

~ J.g. Ballard

Without knowing it, he had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the events of the past few months made sense if one realised that these brilliant and exotic creatures had learned to open the doors.

~ J.g. Ballard

the ragged skyline of the city resembled the disturbed encephalograph of an unresolved mental crisis.

~ J.g. Ballard