The Complete Short Stories Quotes

“Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories

“I am looking into a silent world.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories

“Trick-cyclist or assuager of discontents, whatever his title, the psychiatrist had now passed into history, joining the necromancers, sorcerers and other practitioners of the black sciences. The Mental Freedom legislation enacted ten years earlier by the ultraconservative UW government had banned the profession outright and enshrined the individual’s freedom to be insane if he wanted to, provided he paid the full civil consequences for any infringements of the law. That was the catch, the hidden object of the MF laws. What had begun as a popular reaction against ‘subliminal living’ and the uncontrolled extension of techniques of mass manipulation for political and economic ends had quickly developed into a systematic attack on the psychological sciences. Over-permissive courts of law with their condoning of delinquency, pseudo-enlightened penal reformers, ‘Victims of society’, the psychologist and his patient all came under fierce attack. Discharging their self-hate and anxiety onto a convenient scapegoat, the new rulers, and the great majority electing them, outlawed all forms of psychic control, from the innocent market survey to lobotomy. The mentally ill were on their own, spared pity and consideration, made to pay to the hilt for their failings. The sacred cow of the community was the psychotic, free to wander where he wanted, drooling on the doorsteps, sleeping on sidewalks, and woe betide anyone who tried to help him.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

“On the morning after the storm the body of a drowned giant was washed ashore on the beach five miles to the north-west of the city.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories

“Short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available, an over-valued currency that often turns out to be counterfeit. At its best, in Borges, Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe, the short story is coined from precious metal, a glint of gold that will glow for ever in the deep purse of your imagination.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

“rebarbative”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

“Short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available, an over-valued currency that often turns out to be counterfeit.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories

“since the death of Einstein in 1955 there hasn’t been a single living genius? From Michelangelo, through Shakespeare, Newton, Beethoven, Goethe, Darwin, Freud and Einstein there’s always been a living genius. Now for the first time in 500 years we’re on our own.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

“Take a westbound express to 495th Avenue, cross over to a Redline elevator and go up a thousand levels to Plaza Terminal. Carry on south from there and you’ll find it between 568th Avenue and 422nd Street.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

“I was interested in the real future that I could see approaching, and less in the invented future that science fiction preferred. The future, needless to say, is a dangerous area to enter, heavily mined and with a tendency to turn and bite your ankles as you stride forward.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard