I became educated to the fact that the greatest pain does not come zooming down from a distant planet, but from the depths of the heart. Of course, both could happen; your wife and child could leave you, and you could be sitting alone in your empty house with nothing to live for, and in addition the Martians could bore through the roof and get you.
Philip K. DickJust because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.
Philip K. DickIn this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing.
Philip K. DickThe pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.
Philip K. DickYou mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before --" "The writers," Pris said, "made it up.
Philip K. DickBasically, Sherri's idea had to do with bringing Fat's mind down from the cosmic and the abstract to the particular. She had hatched out the practical notion that nothing is more real than a large World War Two Soviet tank.
Philip K. DickIn Washington and Moscow they are saying, 'Man has finally come of age; he doesn't need paternalistic help.' Which is another way of saying, 'We have abolished that help, and in its place we will rule,' offering no help at all: taking but not giving, ruling but not obeying, telling but not listening, taking life and not giving it. The slayers govern now, without interference; the dreams of mankind have become empty.
Philip K. DickThere are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. That one of the biggest transformations we have seen in human life in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. That we must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.
Philip K. DickThe mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.
Philip K. DickWriting is a lonely way of life. You shut yourself up in your study and work and work.
Philip K. DickWhat is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.
Philip K. DickFat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane – not just insane but totally so – or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out and now knew that Fat was totally insane.
Philip K. DickSo we and our elaborately evolving computers may meet each other halfway. Someday a human being, named perhaps Fred White, may shoot a robot named Pete Something-or-other, which has come out of a General Electric factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And the dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was Mr. White's beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them.
Philip K. DickThat is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.
Philip K. DickFor each person there is a sentence—a series of words—which has the power to destroy them.
Philip K. Dick"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android."
Philip K. DickWe should take mothers in high seas and drown them there, they are as poisonous as lead in the air.
Philip K. DickPerhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.
Philip K. DickEach of us assumes everyone else knows what he is doing. They all assume we know what we are doing. We don't.
Philip K. DickI'm a strange person. Sometimes I hardly know what I'm going to do or say next. Sometimes I seem a stranger to myself. Sometimes what I do surprises me and I can't understand why I do it.
Philip K. DickIt has been said of dreams that they are a 'controlled psychosis,' or, put another way, a psychosis is a dream breaking through during waking hours.
Philip K. DickHow much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?
Philip K. DickCertainly it constitutes bad news if the people who agree with you are buggier than batshit.
Philip K. DickThen it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And-how many of us do know it? ... Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses-what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse, the truth...?
Philip K. DickThere is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.
Philip K. DickHuman has always striven to retain the past, to keep it convincing; there's nothing wicked in that. Without it we have no continuity; we have only the moment. And, deprived of the past, the moment - the present - has little meaning, if any.
Philip K. Dickbut 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 fall—falling 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. DickDon't never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life.
Philip K. DickWhat a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.
Philip K. DickThere exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.
Philip K. DickThe Logos was both that which thought, and the thing which it thought: thinker and thought together. The universe, then, is thinker and thought, and since we are part of it, we as humans are, in the final analysis, thoughts of and thinkers of those thoughts.
Philip K. DickThe day came. The wrath descended. Sin, guilt, and retribution? The manic psychoses of those entities we referred to as states, institutions, systems - the powers, the thrones, the dominations - the things which perpetually merge with men and emerge from them? Our darkness, externalized and visible? However you look upon these matters, the critical point was reached. The wrath descended.
Philip K. DickWhat they do not comprehend is man's helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn't it that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small... and you will escape the jealousy of the great.
Philip K. Dick