Quotes from Philip K. Dick

When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.

It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh.

It sounds like they're saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That's a contradiction.

Once, he thought, I would have seen the stars. Years ago. But now it's only the dust; no one has seen a star in years, at least not from Earth. Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.

We human beings are created and yet we are more rational than the creator himself who spawned us.

You will have to stop searching for me because l will never stop searching for you.

Aimer un esprit, voilà le véritable martyre. Le désespoir incarné. Le nom de Donna ne serait imprimé sur aucune page, il n'apparaîtrait nulle part dans les annales de l'humanité. Disparue sans laisser d'adresse. Il y a des filles comme ça, et c'est celles-là qu'on aime le plus, celles qui ne permettent pas d'espérer, car elles vous échappent alors même que vous refermer vos bras autour d'elles.

I got you out of the police barracks the best way I could," a male voice—the same that Joe had heard on the radio—said. "A strange way," Joe said. "To you strange. Strange to me have been a number of things you've done since the time I first became aware of you." Joe said, "Like giving away my coins." "No, I understood that. What strikes me as odd is your having sat for all those months in your work cubicle, waiting.

I've married before and it was no better, and if I divorce Kathy I'll marry again—because as my brainbasher puts it I can't find my identity outside the role of husband and daddy and big butter-and-egg-man wage earner—and the next damn one will be the same because that's the kind I select. It's rooted in my temperament.

The horse-shoe nail. Remember the old poem? 'For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe the horse was lost. For want of the horse the rider was lost. For want—

Are?you dying? she asked. Just can't breathe. This air. Poor, poor?good lord. I've forgotten your name. Hell of a thing. Barney! He clutched her. No! Don't stop! She arched her back. Her teeth chattered. I wasn't going to, he said. Oooaugh! He laughed. Don't please laugh at me. Not meant unkindly. A long silence, then. Then, Oof.

What he did not know then is that it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. To listen to Gloria rationally ask to die was to inhale the contagion. It was a Chinese finger trap, where the harder you pull to get out, the tighter the trap gets.

I seem to be living in my own novels more and more. I can't figure out why. Am I losing touch with reality? Or is reality actually sliding toward a Phil Dickian type of atmosphere? And if the latter, then for god's sake why? Am I responsible? How could I be responsible? Isn't that solipsism? It's too much for me.

Thomas," Fat told me, "is smarter than I am, and he knows more than I do. Of the two of us Thomas is the master personality." He considered that good; woe unto someone who has an evil or stupid other personality in his head!

The dissatisfaction of the masses is not based on economic deprivation but on a sense of ineffectually. Not an increased standard of living, but more social power, is their fundamental goal, because of their emotional orientation, they arise and act when a powerful leader-figure can coordinate them into a functioning unit rather than a chaotic mass of unformed elements. Dill

AUCKLAND A TURTLE WHICH EXPLORER CAPTAIN COOK GAVE TO THE KING OF TONGA IN 1777 DIED YESTERDAY. IT WAS NEARLY 200 YEARS OLD. THE ANIMAL, CALLED TU'IMALILA, DIED AT THE ROYAL PALACE GROUND IN THE TONGAN CAPITAL OF NUKU, ALOFA.

If there was any sin, it was that these people wanted to keep having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all.

No perderemos realmente lo que sentimos, si lo tenemos claramente en el espíritu.

Ubik talks to us from the future, from the end state to which everything is moving; thus Ubik is not here—which is to say now—but will be

That there is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it's the nature of life to be hazardous—it's the stuff of living.

It is only through the breakdown of his ordinary reality that he can be in-formed by the suprasensual reality of the divine letter: the Logos. Here, as in the famous opening of the Gospel of John—"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God"—language becomes an "active agent" that is actually prior to material reality.

He sighed, defeated by her threat. "I'll dial what's on my schedule for today." Examining the schedule for January 3, 2021, he saw that a businesslike professional attitude was called for. "If I dial by schedule," he said warily, "will you agree to also?" He waited, canny enough not to commit himself until his wife had agreed to follow suit.

My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression," Iran said. "What? Why did you schedule that?" It defeated the whole purpose of the mood organ. "I didn't even know you could set it for that," he said gloomily.

If you dial', Iran said, eyes open and watching, 'for greater venom, then I'll dial the same. I'll dial the maximum and you'll see a fight that makes every argument we've had up to now seem like nothing. Dial and see; just try me!' She rose swiftly, loped to the console of her own mood organ, stood glaring at him, waiting.