J.G. Ballard Quotes

Maybe you are a poet and a dreamer, but don't you realize that those two species are extinct now?

A kind of banalization of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant, ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as packet soup.

In the post-Warhol era a single gesture such as uncrossing one's legs will have more significance than all the pages in War and Peace.

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

I felt the pressure of imagination against the doors of my mind was so great that they were going to burst.

There is nothing like success to breed followers.

The only truly alien planet is Earth.

The future is going to be boring. The suburbanisation of the planet will continue, and the suburbanisation of the soul will follow soon after.

The car as we know it is on the way out.

The endless newsreel clips of nuclear explosions that we saw on TV in the 1960s (were) a powerful incitement to the psychotic imagination, sanctioning *everything*.

The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime.

My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race.

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

The enormous energy of the twentieth century, enough to drive the planet into a new orbit around a happier star, was being expended to maintain this immense motionless pause.

Deep assignments run through all our lives; there are no coincidences.

Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.

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.

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

But I wouldn't recommend writing. You can be a successful writer and never meet another soul. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

The human race sleepwalked to oblivion, thinking only of the corporate logos on it's shroud.

Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled by many psychiatrists.

Yet she felt an impostor, and already the mask had begun to bite into her face.

During the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence.

The suburbs dream of violence.

It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead.

By the eighteenth book, one has a sense of having bricked oneself into a niche, a roosting place for other people's pigeons. I wouldn't recommend it.

Nonetheless, Scranton had travelled in space. He had known the loneliness of separation from all other human beings, he had gazed at the empty perspectives that I myself had seen.

The residents had eliminated both past and future, and for all their activity, they existed in a civilized and eventless world.

You should never value people according to the size of their bank balances. Being poor does not make them bad and being rich does not make them good

The family is not just the basic unit of society; it is the basic unit of eternity.

Do not think that you are too busy to study the gospel.

Be involved; be informed. Try to be understanding and tolerant and to appreciate diversity.

We should seek at all times to purify ourselves and to lead such worthy lives that the Light of Christ emanates from us in all that we say and do.

Our love for our Father in Heaven and the Lord Jesus Christ needs to be reflected in our daily choices and actions. They have promised peace, joy, and happiness to those who keep Their commandments.

When the Spirit is present, people are not offended when you share your feelings about the gospel.

We each shape our own life, and the shape of it is determined largely by our attitude.

It is almost impossible for children and youth to find their way through the seas of life without the guiding light of a good example.

Righteousness has never precluded adversity.

It's not a huge surprise that there are habitations at the bottom of the Black Sea.

I mean, technology is amoral. It has no morality.

So, you know, I think the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending, on our planet.

There's a long list of technologies that have now made it possible to carry out very precise search efforts in the deep sea.

If you plan it out, and it seems logical to you, then you can do it. I discovered the power of a plan.

I prefer sayings over jokes.

My family came in 1635 from England and settled in Williamsburg. Shortly after, they split up; half went to New England and half stayed in Virginia. I'm a Virginian Ballard.

What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre.

Don't confuse facts with reality.

I believe in just enriching the economy. And we're leaving so much on the table, 72 percent of the planet.

I would have to say my favorite place on Earth is Bora Bora.

I love all of the Earth.