206 Quotes by J. G. Ballard

A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status -- all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido (if there is such a thing).

Au revoir, jewelled alligators and white hotels, hallucinatory forests, farewell.

Trying to exhaust himself, Vaughan devised an endless almanac of terrifying wounds and insane collisions: The lungs of elderly men punctured by door-handles; the chests of young women impaled on steering-columns; the cheek of handsome youths torn on the chromium latches of quarter-lights. To Vaughan, these wounds formed the key to a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology. The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind, like exhibits in the museum of a slaughterhouse.

Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.

Fiction is a branch of neurology.

Surrender to a logic more powerful than reason.

I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic.

I don’t think it’s possible to touch people’s imagination today by aesthetic means.

All through my career I’ve written 1,000 words a day – even if I’ve got a hangover. You’ve got to discipline yourself if you’re professional. There’s no other way.