Philip K. Dick: Trending quotes (page 12)

“Our methods may seem strange and indirect. Even incomprehensible. But I assure you we know what we're doing.”

Philip K. Dick book Adjustment Team

Adjustment Team (1954)

“"No communication." Baines was sweating. "In eighteen years there hasn't been any semantic bridge between you? Does he have any contact? Signs? Codes?"
"He — ignores us. He eats here, stays with us. Sometimes he plays when we play. Or sits with us. He's gone days on end. We've never been able to find out what he's doing — or where. He sleeps in the barn — by himself."”

Philip K. Dick

The Golden Man (1954)

Communication , Sleep

“I realized, then, that I had stood without intending to. Flight reaction, I said to myself. Instinctive. Upon experiencing close adversaries. The lizard part of the brain.”

Philip K. Dick The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Page 158
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)

Parting

“"He's too far ahead of us. We can't compete with him." Wisdom's eyes were bleak. "We can only guess what's going to happen. He knows. For him, it's a sure thing. I don't think it'll help him at euth, though. The whole stage is flooded simultaneously. Instantaneous gas, released throughout." He signalled impatiently to the guards. "Get going. Take him down right away. Don't waste any time."”

Philip K. Dick

The Golden Man (1954)

Wisdom , Thinking , Time , Help

“The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except the nuts. It's enough to get you down.”

Philip K. Dick book Confessions of a Crap Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)

Hell , Reading

“Life is short. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand. But no longer.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Life , Art

“"You don't go by odds. You know what's coming. You've seen the cards already." She studied his face intently. "No, you can't be cold-decked. It wouldn't be possible."”

Philip K. Dick

The Golden Man (1954)

Study

“But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That’s closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 10 (p. 168)

Life

“To save one life, Mr. Tagomi had to take two. The logical, balanced mind cannot make sense of that. A kindly man like Mr. Tagomi could be driven insane by the implications of such reality.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Life , Reality , Sense

“Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost…perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that precious little fragment as well.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 11 (pp. 185-186)

Truth

“"You are certain you can keep the truth from her?"
"Sure," Ed said confidently. "I know I can."
"All right." The Old Man nodded slowly. "I will send you back. But you must tell no one." He swelled visibly. "Remember: you will eventually come back to me — everyone does, in the end — and your fate will not be enviable."”

Philip K. Dick book Adjustment Team

Adjustment Team (1954)

Fate , Truth , Confidence

“People have told me that everything about me, every facet of my life, psyche, experiences, dreams, and fears, are laid out explicitly in my writing, that from the corpus of my work I can be absolutely and precisely inferred. This is true.”

Philip K. Dick

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Life , People , Fear , Dreams

“The merest presence of life, even the smallest possible quantity of volition, desire and intent was enough to reverse the process by which the eternal landscape of hell made itself known.”

Philip K. Dick

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 8 (p. 79)

Life , Hell

“Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

Madness

“Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion? Or is it illusion, Barney? I don’t know anything about philosophy; you explain it to me because all I know is religious faith and that doesn’t equip me to understand this.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 143)

Faith , Understanding , Reality

“He awoke—and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought. What would it be like to trudge among them? Great and greater yet: the dream grew as he became fully conscious, the dream and the yearning. He could almost feel the enveloping presence of the other world, which only Government agents and high officials had seen. A clerk like himself? Not likely.”

Philip K. Dick

"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"
The Phillip K. Dick Reader

World , Dreams , Feeling

“For Mercer everything is easy, he thought, because Mercer accepts everything. Nothing is alien to him. But what I’ve done, he thought; that’s become alien to me. In fact everything has become unnatural; I’ve become an unnatural self.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Chapter 21 (p. 230)

“Here, the enemy was not merely another group of human beings with a differing political persuasion; the enemy here was death.”

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 5 (pp. 69-70)

Death

“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. … It's my job and my vice mixed together. You can't hope for better than that: having your job and your sin commingled.”

Philip K. Dick

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Love , Life , Hope , Music

“'“Everything is true”, he said. “Everything anybody has ever thought.””

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Chapter 20 (p. 227)