Quotes from Philip K. Dick

You admit, then, that your world is not real? That it is a forgery? Zina hesitated. It branched off at crucial points, due to our interference with the past. Call it magic if you want or call it technology;

Nothing is true

Blood, Herr Reiss, can never be eradicated like ink.

So we must presume that the worst, rather than the best, choice will be made. The sober and responsible elements will be defeated in the present clash.

Good by,' he said and hung up. What kind of world is it, he asked himself, when an android phones up a bounty hunter and offers him assistance?

Perhaps, deformed as it was, Earth remained familiar, to be clung to. Or possibly the non-emigrant imagined that the tent of dust would deplete itself finally.

I realize now that Yeats's statement, 'I am an immortal soul tied to the body of a dying animal' is diametrically opposite to the actual state of affairs vis-à-vis the human condition.

The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three-dimensional and not in space or time. The information fed to us we hypostatize into the phenomenal world.

Dreadful low-class jingoistic racist invectives, unworthy of me.

Era come se avessi tremato per tutta la vita, a causa di una cronica corrente sotterranea di paura. Tremare, scappare, finire nei guai, perdere le persone che amavo. Come un personaggio dei cartoni animati invece di una persona, mi resi conto. Un cartone animato degli anni Trenta, ammuffito. Dietro a tutto quello che avevo fatto c'era sempre stata la paura di spingermi.

I never felt this way before. We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It's an illusion that I - I personally - really exist; I'm just representative of a type.

Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood. What's dead in there still looks out. It's not just the body looking at you with nothing in it; there's still something in there but it died and just keeps on looking and looking;

What a great burden, the luxury of the way we live. Since no one makes suffer we have elected to volunteer.

You got me out of this place and here's your reward; you're everything we jointly abominate. The essence of what we're committed to destroy.

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 such as selecting anything or changing anything. You can only accept what's put there as it is.

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?

I see,' Rick said. He felt numb. Completely. Throughout his entire body.

We are all insects," he said to Miss Ephreikian. "Groping toward something terrible or divine. Do you not agree?

We trust—I'll tell you what we trust that fouls us up, Roy; it's our goddamn superior intelligence!

Dovunque andrai, ti si richiederà di fare qualcosa di sbagliato. È la condizione fondamentale della vita essere costretti a far violenza alla propria personalità. Prima o poi, tutte le creature viventi devono farlo. È l'ombra estrema, il difetto della creazione; è la maledizione che si compie, la maledizione che si nutre della vita. In tutto l'universo.»

I'll tell you what fouls us up, Roy; it's our goddamn superior intelligence!" She glared at her husband, her small, high breasts rising and falling rapidly. "We're so smart ––Roy, you're doing it right now; goddamn you, you're doing it now !

O que ele não sabia na época era que às vezes uma reação adequada à realidade é enlouquecer. Ouvir Gloria pedir racionalmente para morrer era inalar o contágio. Era uma armadilha de dedos chinesa, na qual, quanto mais você puxa os dedos para sair, mais apertada a armadilha fica. - valis

It is over, isn't it?" Trustingly, he seemed to be waiting for her to tell him, as if she would know. As if hearing himself say it meant nothing; he had a dubious attitude toward his own words; they didn't become real, not until she agreed. "It's over," she said.

Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead.