J. G. Ballard Quotes - Page 6

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• A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status - all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido (if there is such a thing).

  J. G. Ballard

  Drama, Car, Desire

  Penthouse magazine Interview, September 1970.

  24 Copy quote

• I take for granted that for the imaginative writer, the exercise of the imagination is part of the basic process of coping with reality, just as actors need to act all the time to make up for some deficiency in their sense of themselves.

  J. G. Ballard

  Exercise, Reality, Imagination

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• Perhaps violence, like pornography, is some kind of an evolutionary standby system, a last-resort device for throwing a wild joker into the game?

  J. G. Ballard

  Games, Lasts, Violence

  J. G. Ballard (2001). “The complete short stories”, Fourth Estate

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• Everywhere you look - Britain, the States, western Europe - people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves. That's a mistake - a certain level of crime is part of the necessary roughage of life. Total security is a disease of deprivation.

  J. G. Ballard

  Mistake, Europe, People

  "Cocaine Nights". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1996.

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• 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

  War, Legs, Gestures

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• I thought it was a wonderfully conceptual act actually, to fire a replica pistol at a figurehead - the guy could have been working for Andy Warhol!

  J. G. Ballard

  War, Fire, Guy

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• The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.

  J. G. Ballard

  Life, Ideas, Confusion

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• The residents had eliminated both past and future, and for all their activity, they existed in a civilized and eventless world.

  J. G. Ballard

  Past, World, Residents

  J. G. Ballard (2014). “Running Wild”, p.62, Macmillan

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• The twentieth century ended with its dreams in ruins. The notion of the community as a voluntary association of enlightened citizens has died forever. We realize how suffocatingly humane we've become, dedicated to moderation and the middle way. The suburbanization of the soul has overrun our planet like the plague.

  J. G. Ballard

  Dream, Community, Forever

  J. G. Ballard (2010). “Super-Cannes: A Novel”, p.269, Macmillan

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• Nonetheless, Scranton had travelled in space. He had known the loneliness of separation from all other human beings, he had gazed at the empty perspectives that I myself had seen.

  J. G. Ballard

  Loneliness, Space, Perspective

  J. G. Ballard (1962). “Memories of the space age”, Arkham House Pub

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• By the eighteenth book, one has a sense of having bricked oneself into a niche, a roosting place for other people's pigeons. I wouldn't recommend it.

  J. G. Ballard

  Book, People, Pigeons

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• I accepted that a new kind of hate had emerged, silent and disciplined, a racism tempered by loyalty cards and PIN numbers. Shopping was now the model for all human behaviour, drained of emotion and anger.

  J. G. Ballard

  Loyalty, Hate, Shopping

  J. G. Ballard (2006). “Kingdom Come”, HarperCollins UK

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• I don't think any particular painters have inspired me, except in a general sense. It was more a matter of corroboration. The visual arts, from Manet onwards, seemed far more open to change and experiment than the novel, though that's only partly the fault of the writers. There's something about the novel that resists innovation.

  J. G. Ballard

  Art, Thinking, Innovation

  "Age of unreason". Interview With Jeannette Baxter, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2004.

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• I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future.

  J. G. Ballard

  Believe, Ideas, Vocabulary

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• It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead.

  J. G. Ballard

  Powerful, Lying, Writing

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• The functional freedom that anybody can buy a gun and go out and murder a lot of people at a McDonald's is prevalent, yes. But through the effects of TV and interactive video systems and so forth, we'll also have the freedom to pretend to be a mass murderer for the evening. I've seen descriptions of advanced TV systems in which a simulation of reality is computer controlledthe TV viewer of the future will wear a special helmet. You'll no longer be an external spectator to fiction created by others, but an active participant in your own fantasies/dramas.

  J. G. Ballard

  Drama, Gun, Reality

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• I feel that, in a sense, the writer knows nothing any longer. He has no moral stance. He offers the reader the contents of his own head, a set of options and imaginative alternatives. His role is that of a scientist, whether on safari or in his laboratory, faced with an unknown terrain or subject. All he can do is to devise various hypotheses and test them against the facts.

  J. G. Ballard

  Art, Knowledge, Science

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• Trying to exhaust himself, Vaughan devised an endless almanac of terrifying wounds and insane collisions: The lungs of elderly men punctured by door-handles; the chests of young women impaled on steering-columns; the cheek of handsome youths torn on the chromium latches of quarter-lights. To Vaughan, these wounds formed the key to a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology. The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind, like exhibits in the museum of a slaughterhouse.

  J. G. Ballard

  Technology, Men, Keys

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• Lysenkoism: A forlorn attempt not merely to colonize the botanical kingdom, but to instill a proper sense of the puritan work ethic and the merits of self-improvement.

  J. G. Ballard

  Self, Work Ethic, Kingdoms

  "A User's Guide to the Millennium". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1996.

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