J. G. Ballard quotes - page 3

The art of Salvador Dalí, an extreme metaphor at a time when only the extreme will do, constitutes a body of prophecy about ourselves unequaled in accuracy since Freud's "Civilization And Its Discontents". (J. G. Ballard)
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. View quote
J. G. Ballard
The future is going to be boring. The suburbanisation of the planet will continue, and the suburbanisation of the soul will follow soon after. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I admired anyone who could unsettle people. View quote
J. G. Ballard
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. View quote
J. G. Ballard
At the school I attended, the clergyman who ran the cathedral school in Shanghai would give lines to the boys as a punishment. They expected you to copy out, say, 20 or 30 pages from one of the school texts. But I found that rather than laboriously copying out something from a novel by Charles Dickens, it was easier if I made it up myself. View quote
J. G. Ballard
My room is dominated by the huge painting, which is a copy of 'The Violation' by the Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux. The original was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940, and I commissioned an artist I know, Brigid Marlin, to make a copy from a photograph. I never stop looking at this painting and its mysterious and beautiful women. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Twenty years ago no one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Human beings today ... are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate. (J. G. Ballard)
Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Perhaps they resent never having had a chance to become perverse. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death. View quote
J. G. Ballard
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. View quote
J. G. Ballard
The human body as an obedient coolie, to be fed and hosed down. View quote
J. G. Ballard
The uneasy marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an increasingly surreal world. View quote
J. G. Ballard
The Chinese enjoyed the spectacle of death, Jim had decided, as a way of reminding themselves of how precariously they were alive. View quote
J. G. Ballard
In a real war no one knew which side he was on, and there were no flags or commentators or winners. In a real war there were no enemies. View quote
J. G. Ballard
My novels offer an extreme hypothesis which future events may disprove - or confirm. They're in the nature of long-range weather forecasts. View quote
J. G. Ballard
He welcomed the air raids, the noise of the Mustangs as they swept over the camp, the smell of oil and cordite, the deaths of the pilots, and even the likelihood of his own death. (J. G. Ballard)
He waited for the roll-call to end, reflecting on the likely booty attached to a dead American pilot. View quote
J. G. Ballard
These people were the first to master a new type of late twentieth-century life, 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 disappointed. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Our governments are preparing for a future without work, and that includes the petty criminals. Leisure societies lie ahead of us... People will still work - or, rather, some people will work, but only for a decade of their lives. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game. View quote
J. G. Ballard