Home > Author > J.G. Ballard
41 " So, with all this time on my hands, I decided to start a revolution. "
― J.G. Ballard , Millennium People
42 " He walked into the bathroom, wincing at himself in the mirror, that always more tired older brother. "
― J.G. Ballard , The Atrocity Exhibition
43 " Recently she had become intrigued by the admiring glances of other women. The admiration of her own sex existed on a higher and more intense plane than anything men could offer, like the romantic rivalries of sisters. Together, women formed a conspiracy of glances entirely exchanged behind the backs of their menfolk. "
― J.G. Ballard , The Kindness of Women
44 " If we really feared the crash, most of us would be unable to look at a car, let lone drive one. "
― J.G. Ballard
45 " 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 , High-Rise
46 " 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 , Empire of the Sun
47 " The marriage of reason and nightmare that dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia…In a sense, pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other, in the most urgent and ruthless way. "
48 " The Thames Shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream that slid past Chelsea Marina, but a rush of ugly water that had scented the open sea and was ready to make a run for it. "
49 " A kind of banalization of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant, ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as packet soup. "
50 " Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant. "
51 " Kill a politician and you're tied to the motive that made you pull the trigger. "
52 " 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. "
53 " this was an environment built, not for man, but for man's absence. "
54 " Without knowing it, he had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the events of the past few months made sense if one realised that these brilliant and exotic creatures had learned to open the doors. "
55 " the ragged skyline of the city resembled the disturbed encephalograph of an unresolved mental crisis. "
56 " Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements. "
57 " Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century. "
58 " The endless newsreel clips of nuclear explosions that we saw on TV in the 1960s (were) a powerful incitement to the psychotic imagination, sanctioning *everything*. "
59 " After a few minutes Jim was forced to admit that he could recognize none of the constellations. Like everything else since the war, the sky was in a state of change. For all their movements, the Japanese aircraft were its only fixed points, a second zodiac above the broken land. "
60 " I guessed that he was one of those ambitious young physicians who more and more fill the profession, opportunists with a fashionable hoodlum image, openly hostile to their patients. My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race. "
― J.G. Ballard , Crash