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J.G. Ballard Quotes | Quotes said by J.G. Ballard

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #1

    ...reason rationalizes reality for him (Dr. Nathan) as it does for the rest of us, in the Freudian sense of providing a more palatable or convenient explanation, and there are so many subjects about which we should not be reasonable.


  • J.G. Ballard Quote #2

    ...the arts and criminality have always flourished side by side.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #3

    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 Quote #4

    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 Quote #5

    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 Quote #6

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

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #7

    Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #8

    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 Quote #9

    Below the bows of the Arrawa a child’s coffin moved onto the night stream. Its paper flowers were shaken loose by the wash of a landing craft carrying sailors from the American cruiser. The flowers formed a wavering garland around the coffin as it began its long journey to the estuary of the Yangtze, only to be swept back by the incoming tide among the quays and mud flats, driven once again to the shores of this terrible city (279).

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #10

    Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #11

    Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #12

    Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #13

    Even their insistence on educating their children, the last reflex of any exploited group before it sank into submission, marked the end of their resistance.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #14

    First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childishness and even, perhaps, feel affection for him. Then, the moment he was asleep, cut his throat. The synopsis of the ideal marriage.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #15

    He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs.
    One rule in life, he murmured to himself. If you can smell garlic, everything is all right.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #16

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

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #17

    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 Quote #18

    I'm a strong opponent of all religious belief.

    (Conversations pg 96)

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #19

    I'm a strong opponent of all religious belief.

    ...And supposedly 95% of Americans say they believe in God - that's worrying.

    ...Religions are Trojan horses which conceal profoundly strange psychopathy strains. There's no other explanation for them. The sheer fear of death has been the main engine of religions for a very long time.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #20

    If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends. At Eden-Olympia work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #21

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

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #22

    In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #23

    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 Quote #24

    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 Quote #25

    Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly.

    'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I’m too skeptical, but I can’t take it too seriously.'

    Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.'

    Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children’s bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You’re probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I’d hate to want to take that seriously.'

    (The Venus Hunters)

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #26

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

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #27

    Maybe you are a poet and a dreamer, but don't you realize that those two species are extinct now?

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #28

    Miriam - I'll give you any flowers you want!' Rhapsodising over the thousand scents of her body, I exclaimed: 'I'll grow orchids from your hands, roses from your breasts. You can have magnolias in your hair...!'
    'And in my heart?'
    'In your womb I'll set a fly-trap!

  • J.G. Ballard Quote #29

    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 Quote #30

    Once it gets off the ground into space, all science fiction is fantasy.

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