Sex was like Disneyland to her: an allotment of organized wonders and legal mischief. - Martin Amis

My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.

I used to think there was no time like the present. I used to think there was no time but the present. Now I know better — or different, anyway. In the end, the past will always be there. The past is all there is: the present never sticks around for long enough, and the future is anybody’s guess. In time, you always have to hand it to the past. It always gets you in the end.

Like all obsessions, Ballard's novel is occasionally boring and frequently ridiculous. The invariance of its intensity is not something the reviewer can easily suggest. Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different - a disused - part of the reader's brain. You finish the book with some bafflement and irritation. But this is only half the experience. You then sit around waiting for the novel to come and haunt you. And it does.