Quotes from Crash

“I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“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.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“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 increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“I guessed that he was one of those ambitious young physicians who more and more fill the profession, opportunists with a fashionable hoodlum image, openly hostile to their patients. 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.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“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.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“The long triangular grooves on the car had been formed within the death of an unknown creature, its vanished identity abstracted in terms of the geometry of this vehicle. How much more mysterious would be our own deaths, and those of the famous and powerful?”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“Horns sounded from the trapped vehicles on the motorway, a despairing chorus.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“Какая деталь разбивающейся машины поцеловала этот пенис на свадьбе его оргазма и хромированной ручки прибора?”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“We have annexed the future into the present, as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us. Options multiply around us, and we live in an almost infantile world where any demand, any possibility, whether for life-styles, travel, sexual roles and identities, can be satisfied instantly.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

“This dreamlike logic hung over the entire afternoon.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash

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Popular quotes

“children could be taught to hear and feel music in their minds rather than just with their ears; how to make them feel music as a thing of movement rather than a dull, lifeless subject; how to awaken a child’s sensitivity.”
― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, quote from Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

“Unfortunately, unless the job description included a translation of the prologue of The Canterbury Tales, I was dreadfully under-qualified.”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from Stray

“Deceptions are more frequent than changes”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Castle

“So...Now that we got that over with, let's get back to love at first sight, Evan said.
Not infatuation at first sight...Love. With a capital L, he clarified.
Love? Heeb asked, playfully pretending not to know the concept.
Yeah. The real thing. The conviction that if you had this one woman, all other women would become irrelevant. You'd never again be unhappy And you'd give up anything to have her and keep her.
You've experienced that?
Only once. And I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since.
Tell me more.
Sometimes I think that I still chase women just to forget about her. Because I know I can never have her. But I can't seem to forget about her, no matter what girl I'm chasing...No one can possibly compare....
Who is she?
Delilah, Evan said wistfully.
Delilah?, asked Heeb, intrigued
Delilah Nakova, Evan replied, with a hint of awe and reverence in his voice.”
― Zack Love, quote from Sex in the Title: A Comedy about Dating, Sex, and Romance in NYC (Back When Phones Weren't So Smart)

“He understood that the ghost existed first and foremost within his own head. That maybe ghosts always haunted minds, not places. If he wanted to take a shot at it, he’d have to turn the barrel against his own temple.”
― Joe Hill, quote from Heart-Shaped Box

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.