but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fallโfalling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.
Philip K. DickShould we have a leader or should we think for ourselves? Obviously the latter in principle. But-sometimes there lies a gulf between what is theoretically right and that which is practical.
Philip K. DickGrief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you canโt feel grief unless youโve had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because itโs love lost. [โฆ] Itโs the cycle of love completed: to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Grief is the awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. Thatโs what death is, the great loneliness.
Philip K. Dick