Quotes from Philip K. Dick

The universe will never be extinguished because just when the darkness seems to have smothered all, to be truly transcendent, the new seeds of light are reborn in the very depths.

It's all on the surface. Advantage of wealth and power makes this available to them, but it's ersatz as the day is long.

We cannot enter the monstrous schizophrenic morass of Nazi internecine intrigue; our minds cannot adapt.

The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany, by William L. Shirer, Simon and Schuster, 1960, New York; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock, Harper, 1953, New York;

DICK: I think philosophically I fit in with some of the very late pre-Socratic people around the time of Zeno and Diogenes—the Cynics, in the Greek sense. I am inevitably persuaded by every argument that is brought to bear.

Does this cure your depression?" he asked her. "It cures mine." Iran said, "It certainly does cure my depression. Now we can admit to everybody that the sheep's false." "No need to do that," he said cautiously. "But we can," Iran persisted. "See, now we have nothing to hide; what we've always wanted has come true. It's a dream!

Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then." ? Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.

Fat had phoned his pharmacy somewhere along the line to get a refill on his Librium prescription; he had taken thirty Librium just before taking the digitalis. The pharmacist had contacted the paramedics. A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more.

When you attack a tyranny you must expect it to fight back. Why not? Why shouldn't it?

The end times were not the end times after all. The end times were always coming but never here, always nearby and influencing us but never realized.

Blade, she thought. I swallowed it; now cuts my loins forever. Punishment. Married to a Jew and shacking up with a German assassin. She felt tears again in her eyes, boiling. For all I have committed. Wrecked. 'Let's go,' she said, rising to her feet. 'The hairdresser.

When you are Atlas you must carry a heavy load and if you drop it a lot of people suffer...

They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate – confusion between him who worships and that which is worshipped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.

Oh no, she said, still smiling; her eyes poured over with light, that of compassion. She understood how he felt, that this was not an impulse only. But the answer was still no, and, he knew, it would always

The terrible dilemma of our lives. Whatever happens, it is evil beyond compare. Why struggle, then? Why choose? If all alternatives are the same...

Stuart said, "I hid once in the sidewalk. Do I have to do that again?" He looked around at the rest of them, seeking an answer. "Yes," Bonny said. "Then I will," he said. "But I came up out of the sidewalk; I didn't stay there. And I'll come up again.

But in the end I decided against it. The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except more nuts. The whole world is full of nuts. It's enough to get you down.

lived on the Coast, in San Francisco. They have the skin thing there, too.

she had it—his soul—and she was turning it over and over on her tongue. Goddam her!

In the enormous whale-belly of steel and stone carved out to form the long-enduring old opera house, Rick Deckard found an echoing, noisy, slightly miscontrived rehearsal taking place.

Typical of their mania for the trivial, their legalistic fascination with documents, proclamations, ads.

I could see why she felt attracted to Sam K. Barrows. Birds of a feather, or rather lizards of a scale.