English novelist (1930-2009)
Religions emerged too early in human evolution — they set up symbols that people took literally, and they're as dead as a line of totem poles. Religions should have come later, when the human race begins to near its end.
J. G. BALLARD
Cocaine Nights
But a disguise could go too far. Catching sight of myself in the broken windows of the gatehouse, I loosened the knot of my tie. I was still unsure what role I was playing.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Sadly, life is worth nothing. Or next to nothing.... The gods have died, and we distrust our dreams. We emerge from the void, stare back at it for a short while, and then rejoin the void. A young woman lies dead on her doorstep. A pointless crime, but the world pauses. We listen, and the universe has nothing to say. There's only silence, so we have to speak.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Nothing about sex ever shocks women. At least, men's kind of sex.
J. G. BALLARD
Super-Cannes
The dead were buried above ground, the loose soil heaped around them. The heavy rains of the monsoon months softened the mounds, so that they formed outlines of the bodies within them, as if this small cemetery beside the military airfield were doing its best to resurrect a few of the millions who had died in the war. Here and there an arm or a foot protruded from the graves, the limbs of restless sleepers struggling beneath their brown quilts.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
Sadly, crime is the only spur that rouses us. We're fascinated by that "other world" where everything is possible.
J. G. BALLARD
Cocaine Nights
When Armageddon takes place, parking is going to be a major problem.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Either the world is at fault, or we’re looking for meaning in the wrong places.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Jim grieved for these American pilots, who died in a tangle of their harnesses, within sight of a Japanese corporal with a Mauser and a single English boy hidden on the balcony of this ruined building. Yet their end reminded Jim of his own, about which he had thought in a clandestine way ever since his arrival at Lunghua.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
In the theatre the playwright is at least the equal partner of the performers, but in film the writer is shouldered aside by director, actor, producer and editor, who together transform the printed word into something far more glamorous and evocative.
J. G. BALLARD
A User's Guide to the Millennium
In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.
J. G. BALLARD
Running Wild
Police violence, I noted, was directly proportional to police boredom, and not to any resistance offered by protestors.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Horns sounded from the trapped vehicles on the motorway, a despairing chorus.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
The complex of an immensely perverse act waited upon her like a coronation.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
Trying to distract Jane, I talked far too much. During the few months of our marriage I had told my doctor-bride almost nothing about myself, and the drive became a mobile autobiography that unwound my earlier life along with the kilometres of dust, insects and sun.
J. G. BALLARD
Super-Cannes
Black is a very sentimental colour. You can hide any rubbish behind it.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
I had a momentary vision of Brooklands' entire middle class, its prosperous lawyers, doctors and senior managers, being confined to their own ghetto, with nothing to do all day except groom their ponies and swing their croquet mallets.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Like many central Londoners, I felt vaguely uneasy whenever I left the inner city and approached the suburban outlands. But in fact I had spent my advertising career in an eager courtship of the suburbs. Far from the jittery, synapse-testing metropolis, the perimeter towns dozing against the protective shoulder of the M25 were virtually an invention of the advertising industry, or so account executives like myself liked to think. The suburbs, we would all believe to our last gasp, were defined by the products we sold them, by the brands and trademarks and logos that alone defined their lives.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
The three women were up to their thighs in the surging waves. The foam seethed around them, as if the sea was releasing its spawn in a vain attempt to impregnate them.
J. G. BALLARD
Rushing to Paradise