Ballard Quotes

“The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.”
― J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come

“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, High-Rise

“First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childishness and even, perhaps, feel affection for him. Then, the moment he was asleep, cut his throat. The synopsis of the ideal marriage.”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“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

“He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs.
"One rule in life", he murmured to himself. "If you can smell garlic, everything is all right".”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“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

“Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth.”
― J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come

“No one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: …there’s a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itself like the surface of a new planet." JG Ballard, 2004”
― J.G. Ballard

“If J.G. Ballard had been on Twitter, I doubt he'd have cat-posted. Wm. S. Burroughs, on the other hand, probably would have. He loved cats. I received Christmas cards from Burroughs. All were cute cat cards.”
― William Gibson

“It's the most threatening disease of all. It's called "other people”
― J.G. Ballard, Hello America

“The last reports from Las Vegas described the abandoned gambling capital sitting half-submerged in a lake of rain-lashed water, its wheels stilled, the dying lights of its hotels reflected in the meadows of the drowned desert, a violent mirror reflecting all the failure and humiliation of America.”
― J.G. Ballard, Hello America

“So, you're one of the dreamers now, Robert. You've beheld the fata morgana of the terminal lagoon. You look tired. Was it a deep one ?”
― J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World

“Everywhere, the silt encroached, shoring itself in huge banks against a railway viaduct or crescent of offices, oozing through a submerged arcade like the fetid contents of some latter-day Cloaca Maxima. Many of the smaller lakes were now filled with the silt, yellow disks of fungus-covered sludge from which a profuse tangle of competing plant forms emerged, walled gardens in an insane Eden.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World