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J. G. Ballard Quotes
1930–2009 England
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was a British novelist and short story writer who was a prominent member of the New Wave in science fiction. Among his most famous books are the controversial Crash, High-Rise and the autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, all of which have been adapted to film.
England Novelists Science fiction authors Short story writers Also known as: J G Ballard, J.G. Ballard, James Graham Ballard, A User's Guide to the Millenium, A User's Guide to the Millennium, Cocaine Nights
Random J. G. Ballard quote
73 quotes
Real war was the thousands of Chinese refugees dying of cholera in the sealed stockades at Pootung, and the bloody heads of Communist soldiers mounted on pikes along the Bund. 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.
Empire of the Sun (1984)
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.
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)
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.
Cocaine Nights (1996)
The notions about the benefits of transgression in my last three novels are not ones I want to see fulfilled. Rather, they are extreme possibilities that may be forced into reality by the suffocating pressures of the conformist world we inhabit.
Perhaps our own fin-de-siècle decadence takes the form, not of libertarian excess, but of the kind of over-the-top puritanism we see in political correctness and the assorted moral certainties of physical fitness fanatics, New Agers and animal-rights activists.
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)
In his mind Vaughan saw the whole world dying in a simultaneous auto disaster, millions of vehicles hurled together in a terminal congress of spurting loins and engine coolant.
Crash (1973)
Human beings today … are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City [London's Wall Street], 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.
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)
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.
Crash (1973)
After the commonplaces of everyday life, with their muffled dramas, all my organic expertise for dealing with physical injury had long been blunted or forgotten. The crash was the only real experience I had been through for years.
Crash (1973)
In wartime Shanghai I saw so many horrors … Civilised life 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.
The benign catastrophist (2003)
I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again … the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.
Along with our passivity, we're entering a profoundly masochistic phase — everyone is a victim these days, of parents, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, even love itself. And how much we enjoy it. Our happiest moments are spent trying to think up new varieties of victimhood...
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).
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