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.

  48 Copy quote

• Sooner or later, all games become serious.

  J. G. Ballard

  Hippie, Games, Serious

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

  40 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

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

  J. G. Ballard

  Parent, Unhappy, Lessons

  31 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

• Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.

  J. G. Ballard

  Art, Real, Reality

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• I admired anyone who could unsettle people.

  J. G. Ballard

  People

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• 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

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

  J. G. Ballard

  Freedom, World, Madness

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

  23 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

  30 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

• 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

• 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

  76 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

• 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

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• Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.

  J. G. Ballard

  Meaningful, Art, Sex

  "JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty". Interview with Jean-Paul Coillard, www.jgballard.ca. 1998.

  9 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.

  56 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 chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.

  J. G. Ballard

  Retirement, Mean, Significant Change

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

  9 Copy quote

• Hell is out of fashion - institutional hells at any rate. The populated infernos of the 20th century are more private affairs, the gaps between the bars are the sutures of one's own skull. A valid hell is one from which there is a possibility of redemption, even if this is never achieved, the dungeons of an architecture of grace whose spires point to some kind of heaven. The institutional hells of the present century are reached with one-way tickets, marked Nagasaki and Buchenwald, worlds of terminal horror even more final than the grave.

  J. G. Ballard

  Fashion, Skulls, Heaven

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• People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.

  J. G. Ballard

  Thinking, People, Boots

  "Age of Unreason". Interview with Jeannette Baxter, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2004.

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• A visit to Père Lachaise in Paris adds a year to one's life

  J. G. Ballard

  Years, Paris, Add

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• 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

  October 30, 1982 Interview, Re/Search, No. 8/9, 1984.

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• Human beings today are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City, the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that.

  J. G. Ballard

  Wall, Cities, Tyrants

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

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• 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

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