I feel that, in a sense, the writer knows nothing any longer. He has no moral stance. He offers the reader the contents of his own head, a set of options and imaginative alternatives. His role is that of a scientist, whether on safari or in his laboratory, faced with an unknown terrain or subject. All he can do is to devise various hypotheses and test them against the facts.

J. G. Ballard

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

J. G. Ballard

imagination night believe

Sooner or later, all games become serious.

J. G. Ballard

serious hippie games

We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel.

J. G. Ballard

technology fiction world

Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.

J. G. Ballard

lessons parent unhappy

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

J. G. Ballard

sprung-up reality fiction

Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.

J. G. Ballard

real reality art

I admired anyone who could unsettle people.

J. G. Ballard

people

Sooner or later, everything turns into television.

J. G. Ballard

sooner-or-later turns television

Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of our minds like shipwrecks on the sea bed.

J. G. Ballard

dark dream memories

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.

J. G. Ballard

madness freedom world

Films, like memories, seem to re-shoot themselves over the years, reflecting our latest needs and obsessions. In many cases they can change completely, and reveal unexpected depths and shallows. Will Four Weddings and a Funeral be seen one day as a vicious social satire? Could Jaws become as tearful and sentimental as Bambi?

J. G. Ballard

funeral memories years

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

technology science thinking

A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.

J. G. Ballard

nature mean sex

I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

J. G. Ballard

creativity enemy thinking

It was an excess of fantasy that killed the old United States, the whole Mickey Mouse and Marilyn thing, the most brilliant technologies devoted to trivia like instant cameras and space spectaculars that should have stayed in the pages of Science Fiction . . . some of the last Presidents of the U.S.A. seemed to have been recruited straight from Disneyland.

J. G. Ballard

technology space should-have

The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.

J. G. Ballard

competing driven reason

Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.

J. G. Ballard

meaningful sex art

The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.

J. G. Ballard

significant-change retirement mean

Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scenarios of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire.

J. G. Ballard

desire memories blood

People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.

J. G. Ballard

boots people thinking