Quotes from Philip K. Dick

That's what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever's in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it...

And yet, even if one person finds his way … that means there is a Way. Even if I personally fail to reach it.

In 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.

That is not how you do it; you do not solve one problem with another, greater problem.

Random, and yet rooted in the moment in which he lived, in which his life was bound up with all other lives and particles in the universe.

Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.

Before they came here I could stand it, being alone in the building. But now it's changed… You can't go from people to nonpeople.

Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not percieve.

You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.

We must content ourselves with the mystery, the absurdity, the contradictions, the hostility, but also the generosity that our environment offers us. It's not much, but it's always better than the deadly, defeatist certainty of the paranoid.

What you should do, she told Fat during one of his darker hours, is get into studying the characteristics of the T-34. Fat asked what that was. It turned out that Sherri had read a book on Russion armor during World War Two. The T-34 tank had been the Soviet Union's salvation and thereby the salvation of all the Allied Powers- and, by extension, Horselover Fat's, since without the T-34 he would be speaking - not english or Latin or the koine - but German.

It was the mob that swept him into office. However, it's unlikely that when more sober elements prevail they'll want to support a cripple and demagogue who depends on inflaming the mass with his lies and spellbinding.

Despair like that, about total reality, is self-perpetuating.

What we really need is a doctor, not a spear.

like the rest of us he seeks an external savior.

To inspire himself, he lit up a marijuana cigarette, excellent Land-O-Smiles brand.

It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here.' He tapped his head. 'In the mind, not the gun.

Am I the only one who knows? I'll bet I am; nobody else really understands Grasshopper but me - they just imagine they do.

My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression

I think, Dr. Stone said, that when you tried to kill yourself you got in touch with reality for the first time.

Madness, like small fish, runs in hosts....

Joe Chip said, 'I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.

The spider Mercer gave the chickenhead, Isidore; it probably was artificial, too. But it doesn't matter. The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are.

Her smile increased. She had perfect white regular teeth; Irish, Juliana decided. Only Irish blood could give that jawline such femininity.