J. G. Ballard

“The only truly alien planet is Earth.”

“The shopping mall is the last great civic space.”

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery.”

“The consumer society is directed toward a phony novelty. It is fueled by meaningless choice, tastes are manipulated.”

“In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.”

“Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.”

“The drowned world had become a vast unconscious, the repository of all the fears and hopes of the race.”

“The future is a better key to the present than the past.”

“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.”

“The catastrophe is not coming, it is here.”

“We're living in a world where the only sane response is to be insane.”

“The city was a vast physiological organism, its metabolism dictated by the sheer pressure of numbers.”

“Technology has saturation-bombed the psyche.”

“Sanity is a cozy lie.”

“Violence is the only imaginative act of our time.”

“Sex times technology equals the future.”

“Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.”

“In a sense, the car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event.”

“The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.”

“My real interests are in the psychological implications of the technological landscape.”