J. G. Ballard Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  49 Copy quote

• Sooner or later, all games become serious.

  J. G. Ballard

  Hippie, Games, Serious

  "Super-Cannes". Book by J. G. Ballard, 2000.

  41 Copy quote

• 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, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel.

  J. G. Ballard

  Technology, Fiction, World

  "Crash". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1973.

  32 Copy quote

• Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.

  J. G. Ballard

  Art, Real, Reality

  17 Copy quote

• Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.

  J. G. Ballard

  Parent, Unhappy, Lessons

  32 Copy quote

• In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.

  J. G. Ballard

  Freedom, World, Madness

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  24 Copy quote

• The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.

  J. G. Ballard

  Reason, Driven, Competing

  "J.G. Ballard Quotes: Does the Future Have a Future?". Book edited by V. Vale and Mike Ryan, 2004.

  57 Copy quote

• 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, Sprung Up, Fiction

  "Fictions of Every Kind" (1971)

  29 Copy quote

• I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

  J. G. Ballard

  Creativity, Thinking, Enemy

  Interview with Kate Mikhail, www.theguardian.com. September 21, 2002.

  9 Copy quote

• I admired anyone who could unsettle people.

  J. G. Ballard

  People

  21 Copy quote

• 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, Technology, Thinking

  Introduction to the French edition of "Crash", 1974.

  24 Copy quote

• Sooner or later, everything turns into television.

  J. G. Ballard

  Television, Turns, Sooner Or Later

  "Talking Out of Turn #34: JG Ballard". Interview with Kevin Courrier, www.criticsatlarge.ca. 1987.

  3 Copy quote

• 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

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

  8 Copy quote

• Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of our minds like shipwrecks on the sea bed.

  J. G. Ballard

  Dream, Memories, Dark

  31 Copy quote

• It was an excess of fantasy that killed the old United States, the whole Mickey Mouse and Marilyn thing, the most brilliant technologies devoted to trivia like instant cameras and space spectaculars that should have stayed in the pages of Science Fiction . . . some of the last Presidents of the U.S.A. seemed to have been recruited straight from Disneyland.

  J. G. Ballard

  Technology, Space, Should Have

  12 Copy quote

• A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.

  J. G. Ballard

  Nature, Sex, Mean

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

  81 Copy quote

• Put a higher value on yourself. Being hyper-realistic about everything is too simple a get-out.

  J. G. Ballard

  Simple, Realistic, Hyper

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Weekend, Play, Eden

  J. G. Ballard (2010). “Super-Cannes: A Novel”, p.99, Macmillan

  0 Copy quote

• 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

  "J. G. Ballard, The Art of Fiction No. 85". Interview with Thomas Frick, www.theparisreview.org. 1984.

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps the future belongs to magic, and it's we women who control magic.

  J. G. Ballard

  Magic

  1 Copy quote

• 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

  "The Benign Catastrophist". Interview with Susie Mackenzie, www.theguardian.com. September 06, 2003.

  5 Copy quote

• Films, like memories, seem to re-shoot themselves over the years, reflecting our latest needs and obsessions. In many cases they can change completely, and reveal unexpected depths and shallows. Will Four Weddings and a Funeral be seen one day as a vicious social satire? Could Jaws become as tearful and sentimental as Bambi?

  J. G. Ballard

  Memories, Years, Funeral

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  50 Copy quote

• The marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermonuclear weapons systems and soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudoevents, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century-sex and paranoia.

  J. G. Ballard

  Dream, Sex, Moving

  13 Copy quote

• Surrender to a logic more powerful than reason.

  J. G. Ballard

  Powerful, Logic, Surrender

  3 Copy quote

Page 1 of 6

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin