206 Quotes by J. G. Ballard

I feel that the surrealists have created a series of valid external landscapes which have their direct correspondences within our own minds.

Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter.

Nagasaki destroyed by the magic of science is the nearest man has yet approached to the realization of dreams that even during the safe immobility of sleep are accustomed to develop into nightmares of anxiety.

I would love to have been a painter in the tradition of the surrealist painters who I admire so much.

The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.

An arts degree is like a diploma in origami. And about as much use.

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.

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

The only truly alien planet is Earth.