Quotes from Crash

J.G. Ballard ·  224 pages

Rating: (16.3K votes)


“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


About the author

J.G. Ballard
Born place: in Shanghai, China
Born date November 15, 1930
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“You know what my friends and I used to call girls like you? Girls who had everything handed to them on a silver platter, who only cared about how they looked and who was dating the most popular guy?"

"What?"

His grin grows wider. "We called you bitches. You girls were straight-up bitches.”
― quote from Between


“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
― A.A. Milne, quote from The World of Winnie-the-Pooh


“I'm standing in a slaughterhouse where the cattle are begging to become hamburgers. I have a right to be jumpy.”
― Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, quote from Shattered Mirror


“You won’t get what you want, Rory Swenson, until you see what you need.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Finally


“I’m a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly psychotic women behind me and a fleet of state-of-the-art warships crewed by pissed-off pirates, engineers, techs, and former slaves.”
― Pierce Brown, quote from Morning Star


Interesting books

The Tent
(5K)
The Tent
by Margaret Atwood
You Have to Stop This
(9.7K)
You Have to Stop Thi...
by Pseudonymous Bosch
Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song and the Power of Perseverance
(717)
The Ladies' Paradise
(8.9K)
The Ladies' Paradise
by Émile Zola
Special Forces - Soldiers
(2.4K)
Special Forces - Sol...
by Aleksandr Voinov
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings
(7.2K)

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.