Quotes from Philip K. Dick

Freiherr Hugo Reiss made a notation on his pad. Broach subject with SS General Otto Skorzeny, or better yet Otto Ohlendorf at Amt III of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Didn't Ohlendorf head Einsatzgruppe D?

terms of those who loved her. She paid back their love with—well, with what? Malice? Not proven. Hate? Not proven. With the irrational? Yes; proven. In terms of the effect on her friends—such as Fat—no lucid purpose was served but purpose there was: purpose without purpose, if you can conceive of that. Her motive was no motive. We're talking about nihilism. Under everything else, even under death itself

Most self-indulgent of all Nazis, and is in sharp contrast to late H. Himmler, who lived in personal want at low salary. Herr Goring representative of spoils mentality, using power as means of acquiring personal wealth. Primitive mentality, even vulgar, but quite intelligent man, possibly most intelligent of all Nazi chiefs. Object of his drives: self-glorification in ancient emperor fashion.

This is most authentic of dying old U.S. culture, a rare retained artifact carrying flavor of bygone halcyon day.

I've never found a live, wild animal. It must be a fantastic experience to look down and see something living scuttling along. Maybe it'll happen someday to me like it did him.

he could remember the prewar days, the other times. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World's Fair; the former better world.

Sheep are funny, the Whitlock said. Now, you look at how they behave when you throw some grub over the fence to them, such as corn stalks. Why, they'll spot that from a mile away. The Whitlock chuckled. They're smart when it comes to what concerns them. And maybe that helps us see what true smartness is; it isn't having read a lot of big books, or knowing long words...it's being able to spot what's to our advantage. It's got to be useful to be real smartness.

Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof. Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him. He was seeing—them.

Eventually he forgot what event had started off his decline into entropy; God mercifully occludes us to the past as well as the future.

Mr. Tagomi turned to a passer-by, a thin man in rumpled suit. "What is that?" he demanded, pointing. The man grinned. "Awful, ain't it? That's the Embarcadero Freeway. A lot of people think it stinks up the view.

Where are you going? Won't you come downstairs and—be with me? There was the most shocking news on TV; Buster Friendly claims that Mercer is a fake. What do you think about that, Rick? Do you think it could be true?" "Everything is true," he said. "Everything anybody has ever thought.

You know the old brownshirt term for people who spin philosophy? Eierkopf. Egghead. Because the big double-domed empty heads break so easily . . . in the street brawls.

be free of her sinus headaches which have caused her not to appear before us on TV lately, and that those headaches not have anything

I chose God over the material universe.

Secretaries, he thought acidly, read that junk, at home alone in bed at night. It stimulates them. Instead of the real thing. Which they're afraid of. But of course really crave.

Of course, he snuck all this in under the guise of pulp science fiction, baiting us into believing that maybe this is all just fantasy. Only once the story is over, and we take another look at the world around us, do we realize: It's all completely true.

The universe makes certain decisions and on the basis of these decisions some people live and some people die. This is a harsh law. But every creature yields to it out of necessity.

Better a live dog than a dead prince

He should have that chilled but somehow enthusiastic look, as if he believed in nothing and yet somehow had absolute faith.

It would have been rewarding to talk to Dave, he decided. Dave would have approved what I did. But also he would have understood the other part, which I don't think even Mercer comprehends. For Mercer everything is easy, he thought, because Mercer accepts everything. Nothing is alien to him. But what I've done, he thought; that's become alien to me. In fact everything about me has become unnatural; I've become an unnatural self.

And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.

It is therapeutic to meet these people who have intimidated you. And to discover what they are really like. Then the intimidation goes.

You stupid bastard, does what you're fighting for look so real now? Skin pigment. What a laugh! Why not eye color? Too bad nobody ever thought of that. It cuts it a little finer, but basically it's the same thing.

The door, meagerly, opened and he saw within the apartment a fragmented and misaligned shrinking figure, a girl who cringed and slunk away and yet held onto the door, as if for physical support. Fear made her seem ill; it distorted her body lines, made her appear as if someone had broken her and then, with malice, patched her together badly.