Quotes from Super-Cannes

J.G. Ballard ·  400 pages

Rating: (3.4K votes)


“Sooner or later, all games become serious.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes


“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. At Eden-Olympia work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes


“The twentieth century ended with its dreams in ruins. 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, quote from Super-Cannes


“The house was silent, but somewhere in the garden was a swimming pool filled with unsettled water.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes


“The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes



“I love the smell of male urine and the reek of his groin on my bath towels after he’d had a shower”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes


“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, quote from Super-Cannes


“Nothing about sex ever shocks women. At least, men’s kind of sex.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes


About the author

J.G. Ballard
Born place: in Shanghai, China
Born date November 15, 1930
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Popular quotes

“- Vai katrā ziņā kaut kam arvien jābūt patiesībai?
- Laikam ne. Kāpēc?
- Es nezinu. Bet iespējams, ka būtu mazāk karu, ja cilvēki tik ļoti negribētu pārliecināt cits citu par savas personiskās patiesības pareizību.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from A Time to Love and a Time to Die


“I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, don’t call anyone. I guessed talking with the guy would amount to doing something, which would contravene the don’t do anything part of the command. But then, breathing was doing something, technically. So was metabolizing. My hair was growing, my beard was growing, all twenty of my nails were growing, I was losing weight. It was impossible not to do anything. So I decided that component of the order was purely rhetorical.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Enemy


“Spoznal se, da je ljudstvo zanikrno in leno ter da se ne izplača, da se žrtvujes zanj. Zaman sem bil klical in vabil. Misliš, da je ogromni večini ljudij kaj do resnice? Kje neki! Svoj mir zahtevajo ter bajke za svojo lačno domišljijo. Ali pa kaj do pravičnosti? Na to se požvižgajo, da le ugodiš njihovim osebnim koristim. Nisem se hotel varati več. Če je človeštvo tako, tedaj izrabi njene slabosti, da dosežeš svoj visoki cilj, ki bi bil tudi njemu v korist, ki ga pa ne razume. Potrkal sem na neumnost in na lahkovernost ljudi. Na njihovo slo po užitkih, na njihove sebične želje. Vrata so se mi na stežaj odprla”
― Vladimir Bartol, quote from Alamut


“We have the same symptoms as tuberculosis, especially in the eyes of the Romantic Poets. Pale, tired, coughing up blood.”
“That’s romantic?”
I had to smile. “Romantic with a capital ‘R.’ You know, like Byron and Coleridge.”
He gave a mock shudder. “Please, stop. I barely passed English Lit.”
I snorted. “I didn’t have that option. One of my aunts took Byron as a lover.”
“Get out.”
“Seriously. It makes Lucy insanely jealous.”
“That girl is . . .”
“My best friend,” I filled in sternly.
“I was only going to say she’s unique.”
― Alyxandra Harvey, quote from My Love Lies Bleeding


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