Quotes from Philip K. Dick

Herr Konsul, sorry to take your time." A man's voice. The blood in Reiss' veins instantly stopped its motion.

What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly?

Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed—all he's got to do is thump on the drum, and there's his response. And he laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets.

I'll try a slice of peach, she said, and gingerly picked out a slippery pink-orange furry slice with her long fingers. And then, as she ate the slice of peach, she began to cry.

Come down here, he said, and we'll rent a hotel room. Why? Something I heard today, he said hoarsely. About situations involving human men and android women.

It requires the greatest kind of wisdom, she thought, to know when to apply injustice. How can justice fall victim, even, to what is right?

They're not idealists like Joe and me; they're cynics with utter faith. It's a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy—that

I've been waiting a long time for last year. But I guess it's just not coming again.

We are absurd," Mr. Tagomi said, "because we live by a five-thousand-year-old book. We set it questions as if it were alive. It is alive. As is the Christian Bible; many books are actually alive. Not in metaphoric fashion. Spirit animates it. Do you see?" He inspected Mr. Baynes' face for his reaction.

I may actually do what I've pretended many times to have done: use my judo in self-defense. To save my—virginity? My life, she thought. But more likely he is just some poor low-class wop laboring slob with delusions of glory; he wants to go on a grand spree, spend all his money, live it up—and then go back to his monotonous existence. And he needs a girl to do it.

In a foolish and loud manner he had argued politics; he had been rude in his disagreeing, and only the adroit tact of his host had sufficed to save the evening. How much I have to learn, Childan thought. They're so graceful and polite. And I—the white barbarian. It is true.

That goat," Rachael said. "You love the goat more than me. More than you love your wife, probably. First the goat, then your wife, then last of all—" She laughed merrily. "What can you do but laugh?

I'm not much but I'm all I have.

One seeks to contravene one's perceptions - why? So that one can wander utterly lost, without signposts or guide?

Amazing, the power of fiction, even cheap popular fiction, to evoke. No wonder it's banned within Reich territory;

That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself.

Jesus Christ! I said. You can't sleep with a bishop! I already have, Kirsten said.

Death at each moment, one avenue which is open to us at any point. And eventually we choose it, in spite of ourselves. Or we give up and take it deliberately.

Okay, I'll come back again on Thursday.

the uproar of radios, traffic noises, the signs and people lulled him. They blotted out his inner worries.

When the senile patient awakens in the morning and asks for his mother, remind him that she is long since dead, that he is over eighty years old and living in a convalescent home, and that this is 1992 and not 1913 and that he must face reality and the fact that

Rachael said, "Do you know what the lifespan of a humanoid robot such as myself is? I've been in existence two years. How long do you calculate I have?" After a hesitation he said, "About two more years." "They never could solve that problem. I mean cell replacement. Perpetual or anyhow semi-perpetual renewal. Well, so it goes.

it was an odd sensation, knowing intellectually that they were machines but emotionally reacting anyhow.

Parsifal is one of those corkscrew artifacts of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you've learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you suddenly begin to scratch your head and say, 'Wait a minute. This makes no sense