Philip K. Dick

Quotes

• “Also, I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue--the clue--lies there. I'm always ferreting out elliptical points, od...”
• “Barefoot conducts his seminars on his houseboat in Sausalito. It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this ...”
• “Well, I hate to admit it, but it is possible that there is (one) such a thing as telepathy and (two) that the CETI proje...”
• “Retrograde time is forward time which has passed the turning point; then as it turns back it is freighted with the load ...”
• “I use this as a paradigm for our whole attitude toward life, what you did was you worked very hard, you try to understan...”
• “We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by ...”
• “What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if...”
• “Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand now how you suffer when you’re depressed; I always thought ...”
• “The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, wa...”
• “All his life he had controlled machines, bent nature and the forces of nature to man and man's needs. The human race had...”
• “Yet, the dark fire waned: the life force oozed out of her, as he had so often witnessed before with other androids. The ...”
• “The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a par...”
• “There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn't even terrible; it's possibly funny, if even that. It's emb...”
• “There were many human groups that did not go to war; the Eskimos never grasped the idea at all, and the American Indians...”
• “If this place were closer to Terra there’d be empty beer cans and plastic plates strewn around. The trees would be gone....”
• “We'll fight back, we'll fight back, we'll fight back," a man near Doctor Stockstill was chanting. Stockstill looked at h...”
• “Am I racially kin to this man? Baynes wondered. So closely so that for all intents and purposes it is the same? Then it ...”
• “You put on a bishop's robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, ...”
• “It’s not just the drive. They’re right out front. Everywhere. Waiting for me. All day and night.”“Who are, dear?”“Robots...”
• “Blade, she thought. I swallowed it; now cuts my loins forever. Punishment. Married to a Jew and shacking up with a Germa...”
• “Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane – not just insane b...”
• “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...”
• “Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossib...”
• “There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists,...”
• “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you––about it being electrical.” She put her hand out, touched his arm; she felt guilty, see...”
• “You're - psychotic. There's something wrong with you.""I know," Benteley agreed. "I'm a sick man. And the more I see, th...”
• “Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Becau...”
• “We must content ourselves with the mystery, the absurdity, the contradictions, the hostility, but also the generosity th...”
• “...hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which bot...”
• “And yet now and then he let himself steal a glance at her. Lovely dark colors of her skin, hair, and eyes. We are half-b...”
• “Because of an imaginary voice, Nicholas had become a whole person; rather than the partial person he had been in Berkele...”
• “Basically, Sherri's idea had to do with bringing Fat's mind down from the cosmic and the abstract to the particular. She...”
• “There is evil! It's actual, like cement.I can't believe it. I can't stand it.Evil is not a view ... it's an ingredient i...”
• “A person’s authentic nature is a series of shifting, variegated planes that establish themselves as he relates to differ...”
• “Spray a bug with a toxin and it dies; spray a man, spray his brain, and he becomes an insect that clacks and vibrates ab...”
• “I lifted you from the tomb world just now and I will continue to lift you until you lose interest and want to quit. But ...”
• “The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the...”
• “You know what the doctor said to me to cheer me up?" Fat said. "There are worse diseases than cancer.""Did he show you s...”
• “#36:...Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangements of part of the Brain is a language...”
• “Love isn't just wanting another person the way you want to own an object you see in a store. That's just desire. You wan...”
• “Just tell me why; why the fucking why?" To which the universe would hollowly respond, "My ways cannot be known, oh man."...”
• “You're an unusual person," she said."Bill didn't like you, but he never likes anything different. He's so—so prosaic. Do...”
• “The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time it uses up the better part of your life and when you are fi...”
• “I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know....”
• “You know what I think? I think you've picked up the Nazi idea that Jews can't create. That they can only imitate and sel...”
• “Guilt -- if there was any guilt -- spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. . . . Perhaps at some p...”
• “I used to condemn junkies, like they could get off the stuff if they really wanted to, and that is just as stupid as say...”
• “Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowle...”
• “It takes a certain amount of courage, he though, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I ...”
• “I should not yield to it, he told himself once again as he walked along carrying the briefcase. Compulsion-obsession-pho...”