English novelist (1930-2009)
At the sales counter, the human race's greatest confrontation with existence, there were no yesterdays, no history to be relived, only an intense transactional present.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Wars came early to Shanghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
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.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
The notion of the community as a voluntary association of enlightened citizens has died forever. We realize how suffocatingly humane we've become, dedicated to moderation and the middle way. The suburbanization of the soul has overrun our planet like the plague.
J. G. BALLARD
Super-Cannes
Tourism is the great soporific. It's a huge confidence trick, and gives people the dangerous idea that there's something interesting in their lives. It's musical chairs in reverse..... All the upgrades in existence lead to the same airports and resort hotels, the same piña colada bullshit. The tourists smile at their tans and their shiny teeth and think they're happy. But the suntans hide who they really are-- salary slaves, with heads full of American rubbish. Travel is the last fantasy the 2oth Century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent yourself.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Twenty years ago no one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: entire relationships flourish, friendships prosper ... there's a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itself like the surface of a new planet.
J. G. BALLARD
"Age of Unreason", The Guardian, June 22, 2004
Every night in Shanghai those Chinese too poor to pay for the burial of their relatives would launch the bodies from the funeral piers at Nantao, decking the coffins with paper flowers. Carried away on the tide, they came back on the next, returning to the waterfront of Shanghai with all the other debris abandoned by the city. Meadows of paper flowers drifted on running tide and clumped in miniature floating gardens around the old men and women, the young mothers and small children, whose swollen bodies seemed to have been fed during the night by the patient Yangtze.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends.
J. G. BALLARD
Super-Cannes
They killed to free themselves from a tyranny of love and care.
J. G. BALLARD
Running Wild
Hollywood flicks are fun, if your idea of a good time is a hamburger and a milk shake. America invented the movies so it would never need to grow up. We have angst, depression and middle-aged regret. They have Hollywood.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
The human race sleepwalked to oblivion, thinking only of the corporate logos on it's shroud.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Jim knew that he was awake and asleep at the same time, dreaming of the war and yet dreamed of by the war.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
People no longer need enemies--in this millennium their great dream is to become victims. Only their psychopathies can set them free.
J. G. BALLARD
Super-Cannes
Real war was the thousands of Chinese refugees dying of cholera in the sealed stockades at Pootung, and the bloody heads of Communist soldiers mounted on pikes along the Bund. In a real war no one knew which side he was on, and there were no flags or commentators or winners. In a real war there were no enemies.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
After a few minutes Jim was forced to admit that he could recognize none of the constellations. Like everything else since the war, the sky was in a state of change. For all their movements, the Japanese aircraft were its only fixed points, a second zodiac above the broken land.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
Look at the most religious areas of the world at present -- the Middle East and the United States. These are sick societies, and they're going to get sicker. People are never more dangerous than when they have nothing left to believe in except God.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Put a higher value on yourself. Being hyper-realistic about everything is too simple a get-out.
J. G. BALLARD
Cocaine Nights
The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Perhaps the future belongs to magic, and it's we women who control magic.
J. G. BALLARD
Rushing to Paradise