Maybe you are a poet and a dreamer, but don't you realize that those two species are extinct now? J. G. Ballard More Quotes by J. G. Ballard More Quotes From J. G. Ballard I work for three or four hours a day, in the late morning and early afternoon. Then I go out for a walk and come back in time for a large gin and tonic. J. G. Ballard afternoonthreemorning The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates - the inhabitants of the marketing zones in the consumer society, television audiences and news magazine readerships, who vote with money at the cash counter rather than with ballot paper at the polling boot. These huge and passive electorates are wide open to any opportunist using the psychological weaponry of fear and anxiety, elements that are carefully blanched out of the world of domestic products and consumer software. J. G. Ballard anxietynewsmarketing Across the communication landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. J. G. Ballard communicationdreammoving I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. J. G. Ballard politicalinspirationalway Put a higher value on yourself. Being hyper-realistic about everything is too simple a get-out. J. G. Ballard hyperrealisticsimple Psychiatrists the dominant lay priesthood since the First World War. J. G. Ballard warworldfirsts 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. J. G. Ballard enlightenmentviewsthinking One of the things I took from my wartime experiences was that reality was a stage set... the comfortable day-to-day life, school, the home where one lives and all the rest of it... could be dismantled overnight. J. G. Ballard homerealityschool Au revoir, jewelled alligators and white hotels, hallucinatory forests, farewell. J. G. Ballard farewellwhiteforests 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 keyswarart I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror. J. G. Ballard mirrorsracelooks God was a clever idea ... The human race came up with a winner there. J. G. Ballard racegodclever There is a British pop group called God. At a recent book signing the lead singer introduced himself and gave me a cassette. I have heard the voice of God. J. G. Ballard groupsvoicebook The marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermonuclear weapons systems and soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudoevents, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century-sex and paranoia. J. G. Ballard dreamsexmoving Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements. J. G. Ballard contentmentwritingthinking 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. J. G. Ballard shellsofficepeople E. Klimov's 'Come and See,' about partisans fighting the Germans in Byelorussia, is the greatest anti-war film ever made. J. G. Ballard filmfightingwar His mother and father were agnostics, and Jim respected devout Christians in the same way that he respected people who were members of the Graf Zeppelin Club or shopped at the Chinese department stores, for their mastery of an exotic foreign ritual. Besides, those who worked hardest for others, like Mrs. Philips and Mrs. Gilmour and Dr. Ransome, often held beliefs that turned out to be correct. J. G. Ballard christianmotherfather In his mind Vaughan saw the whole world dying in a simultaneous automobile disaster, millions of vehicles hurled together in a terminal congress of spurting loins and engine coolant. J. G. Ballard dyingmindtogether Nudity in photography, whether involving adults or children, is a subject sinking under a freight of political and moral disapproval it could never hope to support, and this is not the place for me to get out the bilge pump. I will only say that critics who tremble so fiercely at the thought of the voyeuristic male gaze miss the point that distance generates mystery and enchantment, and expresses the awe with which the male imagination regards all women. J. G. Ballard distancephotographychildren
