I picked up an advance copy of J.G. Ballard: Selected Nonfiction 1962-2007 and found it wonderfully stimulating, provocative, and prescient. It’s well worth reading. There are striking insights on every page but I wanted to jot down a few of them here. Before I forget them.

“Real power has gone, migrating to the shopping malls and hypermarkets where we make the important decisions in our lives. Consumerism controls everything, and the ballet box defers to the cash counter. The only escape from all of this is probably out-and-out madness, and I expect the number of supermarket shootings and meaningless crimes to increase dramatically in the coming years. If anywhere, the future seems to lie with competing systems of psychopathology.”
–J.G. Ballard, 2005

“Somewhere inside [David Lynch’s] head, one senses, Francis Bacon is repainting the Bates Motel.”
–J.G. Ballard, 1997

“Everyone who has strayed even briefly into the film world is bewildered by the titanic self-belief of those involved and their readiness to gamble everything on an impossible dream. Yet without them, no films would ever be made.”
–J.G. Ballard, 2005

“Realism has failed us, and the imagination must take its place. Love may be an illusion, but it is all we have. It must be tested, not against our modest private lives, but in the fiercest fire. We are less important than we think, but our imaginations can transcend everything, even our own deaths.”
–J.G. Ballard, 2005