Philip K. Dick: Trending quotes

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Philip K. Dick: 556 quotes5 likes

“If I had known it was harmless
I would have killed it myself.”

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 6 (p. 94)

“Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy… fear makes you always, always hold something back.”

Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 21 (p. 171)
Source: VALIS
Context: "Fear,” Jason said, “can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you're afraid you don’t commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back.”'

“It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.”

Philip K. Dick

“The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS

“How undisturbed, the sleep of the foolish.”

Philip K. Dick Radio Free Albemuth

Source: Radio Free Albemuth

“I like her; I could watch her the rest of my life. She has breasts that smile.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“It has been said of dreams that they are a 'controlled psychosis,' or, put another way, a psychosis is a dream breaking through during waking hours.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS

“So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.”

Philip K. Dick The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Source: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

“No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.”

Philip K. Dick book Galactic Pot-Healer

Source: Galactic Pot-Healer

“To live is to be hunted.”

Philip K. Dick book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Variant: To live is to be hunted.
Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 27 (p. 213)
Source: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

“…we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people.”

Philip K. Dick book Counter-Clock World

Source: Counter-Clock World

“You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all. I mean before they came here I could stand it… But now it has changed. You can't go back, he thought. You can't go from people to nonpeople." - J. R. Isidore”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Fish cannot carry guns.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS (1981)

“Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“For each person there is a sentence — a series of words — which has the power to destroy him”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)
Context: For each person there is a sentence — a series of words — which has the power to destroy him … another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you're lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.

“Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

“It’s a lost art,” Hank said. “Maybe there’s an instruction manual on it.”
Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 4 (p. 56)

“It's the basic condition of life to be required to violate our own identity.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed—run over, maimed, destroyed—but they continued to play anyhow.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Author’s Note (p. 276)
Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977)

“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly