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Philip K. Dick: 556 quotes5 likes

“Giving me a new idea is like handing a cretin a loaded gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang, bang.”

Letter to Patricia Warrick (17 May 1978), published in Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, 1977-1979 (1993)

“How can I join one of the parties? All their slogans and propaganda, it seems so damn - silly. How the hell can I get exited about clean teeth and underarm odor. People kill each other over these trifles… it doesn't make sense. There's going to be suicidal civil war, if that amendment passes, and I'm supposed to join one side or the other?”

Philip K. Dick book The Chromium Fence

"The Chromium Fence"
The Phillip K. Dick Reader

“You're killing yourself with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

“As always, when the opportunity arose, Joe took a long, astute look at the girl whom, if he could have managed it, he would have had as his mistress, or, even better, his wife. It did not seem possible that Wendy Wright had been born out of blood and internal organs like other people. In proximity to her he felt himself to be a squat, oily, sweating, uneducated nurt whose stomach rattled and whose breath wheezed. Near her he became aware of the physical mechanisms which kept him alive; within him machinery, pipes and valves and gas-compressors and fan belts had to chug away at a losing task, a labor ultimately doomed. Seeing her face, he discovered that his own consisted of a garish mask; noticing her body made him feel like a low-class windup toy. All her colors possessed a subtle quality, indirectly lit. Her eyes, those green and tumbled stones, looked impassively at everything; he had never seen fear in them, or aversion, or contempt. What she saw she accepted. Generally she seemed calm. But more than that she struck him as being durable, untroubled and cool, not subject to wear, or to fatigue, or to physical illness and decline. Probably she was twenty-five or -six, but he could not imagine her looking younger, and certainly she would never look older. She had too much control over herself and outside reality for that.”

Philip K. Dick book Ubik

Source: Ubik (1969), Chapter 5 (pp. 58-59)

“An Irishman hears that the banks are failing. He runs into the bank where he keeps his money and demands every cent of it. 'Yes sir,' the teller says politely. 'Do you want it in cash or in the form of a check?' The Irishman replies: 'Well, if you have it, I don't want it. But if you haven't got it, I must have it immediately.”

Philip K. Dick book The World Jones Made

The World Jones Made (1956)

“The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 10 (p. 161)

“This one fact alone, Rachmael reflected, should have frightened the rational citizen. But—
The people did not know. The media had not reported it.”

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 6 (p. 56)

“[Fiction] Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

“One thing I've found that I can do that I really enjoy is rereading my own writing, earlier stories and novels especially. It induces mental time travel, the same way certain songs you hear on the radio do … the whole thing returns, an eerie feeling that I'm sure you've experienced.”

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

““Is it my fault?” Joe said. “Did I make that quarter you gave me obsolete?” He felt anger.
“In some weird way,” Al said, “yes, it is your fault. But I don’t know how. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out.””

Philip K. Dick book Ubik

Source: Ubik (1969), Chapter 7 (p. 91)

“This hypnagogic condition. Attention-faculty diminished so that twilight state obtains; world seen merely in symbolic, archetypal aspect, totally confused with unconscious material.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

“In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law — in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy.”

"The Day the Gods Stopped Laughing," unpublished article written in the late 60's, quoted in To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 (1989) by Gregg Rickman

“What does it mean, insane? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it? It is something they do, something they are. It is their unconsciousness…Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans…Their view; it is cosmic…They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles of space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

“Explain it,” Hamilton muttered. “This place—this bar. Why doesn’t God erase it? If this world operates by moral laws—”
“This bar is necessary to the moral order. This is a sinkpit of corruption and vice, a fleshpot of iniquity. You think salvation can function without damnation? You think virtue can exist without sin? That’s the trouble with you atheists; you don’t grasp the mechanics of evil. Get on the inside and enjoy life, man. If you’re one of the Faithful, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Opportunist.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

“Bet your sweet soul.”
Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 5 (p. 66)

“People just have no criterion left to evaluate the importance of things. I think the only thing that would really affect people would be the announcement that the world was going to be blown up by the hydrogen bomb. I think that would really affect people. I think they would react to that. But outside of that, I don't think they would react to anything. "Peking has been wiped out by an earthquake, and the RTD — the bus strike is still on."”

And some guy says, "Damnit! I'll have to walk to work!" <br class="br">Quoted in Daniel DePerez, "An Interview with Philip K. Dick," http://www.philipkdickfans.com/frank/sfrinter.htm Science Fiction Review, No. 19, Vol. 5, no. 3 (August 1976)

“If you are wise, Matson said to himself grimly, you never take one-way trips. Anywhere. Even to Boise, Idaho…even across the street. Be certain, when you start, that you can scramble back.”

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 3 (p. 27)

““Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”
“It’s a lost art,” Hank said. “Maybe there’s an instruction manual on it.””

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 4 (p. 56)

“The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Chapter 22 (p. 241)

“I am not in a position to enjoy sexual relations.”

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 12 (p. 132)

“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? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 185)