J. G. Ballard quotes - page 4

A lot of my prophecies about the alienated society are going to come true. (J. G. Ballard)
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. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Dalí went on shocking the bourgeoisie till the end. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I define Inner Space as an imaginary realm in which on the one hand the outer world of reality, and on the other the inner world of the mind meet and merge. View quote
J. G. Ballard
His eyes measured the little chamber. View quote
J. G. Ballard
The war was about to end and yet the Japanese were obsessed with knowing exactly how many prisoners they held. Jim closed his eyes to calm his mind, but the sentry barked at him, suspecting that Jim was about to play some private game of which Sergeant Nagata would disapprove. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I think the new science fiction, which other people apart from myself are now beginning to write, is introverted, possibly pessimistic rather than optimistic, much less certain of its own territory. View quote
J. G. Ballard
By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. View quote
J. G. Ballard
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind. View quote
J. G. Ballard
All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. (J. G. Ballard)
Everywhere you look - Britain, the States, western Europe - people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves. View quote
J. G. Ballard
By the logic of the high-rise those most innocent of any offence became the most guilty. View quote
J. G. Ballard
People are locking their doors and switching off their nervous systems. View quote
J. G. Ballard
During the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I felt the pressure of imagination against the doors of my mind was so great that they were going to burst. View quote
J. G. Ballard
If you're against globalisation, it doesn't achieve much by sort of bombing the head offices of Shell or Nestle. You unsettle people much more by blowing up an Oxfam shop because people can't understand the motive. View quote
J. G. Ballard
The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern. View quote
J. G. Ballard
Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter. View quote
J. G. Ballard
The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai. (J. G. Ballard)
A reality that is electronic... Once everybody's got a computer terminal in their home, to satisfy all their needs, all the domestic needs, there'll be a dismantling of the present broadcasting structure, which is far too limited and limiting. View quote
J. G. Ballard
What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths. View quote
J. G. Ballard
It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead. View quote
J. G. Ballard
When the modern movement began, starting perhaps with the paintings of Manet and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, what distinguished the modern movement was the enormous honesty that writers, painters and playwrights displayed about themselves. The bourgeois novel flinches from such notions. View quote
J. G. Ballard