J. G. Ballard famous quotes

03-23-2025

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Believe #Night #Imagination
Sooner or later, all games become serious.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Hippie #Games #Serious
Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Parent #Unhappy #Lessons
Everywhere--all over Africa and South America . . . you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There's a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they're terrifying, because they are the death of the soul. . . . This is the prison this planet is being turned into.
-- J. G. Ballard

#America #People #Soul
A widespread taste for ***** means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Sex #Mean #Extinction
In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Freedom #World #Madness
Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Reality #Fiction #Literature
Along with our passivity, we're entering a profoundly masochistic phase everyone is a victim these days, of parents, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, even love itself. And how much we enjoy it. Our happiest moments are spent trying to think up new varieties of victimhood...
-- J. G. Ballard

#Thinking #Doctors #Parent
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Science #Thinking #Technology
Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Reality #Numbers #Forget
Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Art #Real #Reality
They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never dissapointed.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Self #Rapids #Involvement
The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic.
-- J. G. Ballard

#People #Imagination #Fiction
All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Past #Museums #Egypt
Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scenarios of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Memories #Blood #Desire
Surrender to a logic more powerful than reason.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Powerful #Logic #Surrender
Actually, the suburbs are far more sinister places than most city dwellers imagine. Their very blandness forces the imagination into new areas. I mean, one's got to get up in the morning thinking of a deviant act, merely to make certain of one's freedom. It needn't be much; kicking the dog will do.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Dog #Morning #Mean
I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic
-- J. G. Ballard

#Inspirational #Political #Way
Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Reality #Migration #Stuff
I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Fear #Interesting #Soul
The ultimate concept car will move so fast, even at rest, as to be invisible.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Moving #Car #Invisible
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind -- mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery . . .
-- J. G. Ballard

#Technology #Fiction #World
Consumerism is so weird. Its a sort of conspiracy we collude in. Youd think shoppers spending their hard-earned cash would be highly critical. You know that the manufacturers are trying to have you on.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Thinking #Trying #Would Be
I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. A Buick radiator grille is as much a political statement as a Rolls Royce radiator grille, one enshrining a machine aesthetic driven by a populist optimism, the other enshrining a hierarchical and exclusive social order.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Order #Optimism #Political
Sleep is an eight-hour peep show of infantile erotica.
-- J. G. Ballard

#Sleep #Eight #Hours

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