Quotes from Philip K. Dick

You mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before --" "The writers," Pris said, "made it up.

Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.

Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.

I guess that's the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure.

Comprehension follows perception.

When I believe, I am crazy. When I don't believe, I suffer psychotic depression.

I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist.

A man is an angel that has gone deranged.

Men and the world are mutually toxic to each other.

And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency.

The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.

For each person there is a sentence—a series of words—which has the power to destroy them.

This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.

When he turned on the tape-transport once more, Arctor was saying, "-- as near as I can figure out, God is dead." Luckman answered, "I didn't know He was sick.

Where there's dope, there's hope!

If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.

Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small... and you will escape the jealousy of the great.

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

Everything in life is just for a while.

There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.

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

Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.