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Philip K. Dick Quotes
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Philip Kindred Dick was an American science fiction writer. Dick explored philosophical, social, and political themes in his novels with plots dominated by monopolistic corporations, alternative universes, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. His work reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology, and often drew upon his life experiences in addressing the nature of reality, identity, drug abuse, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences.

Born in Illinois before moving to California, Dick began publishing science fiction stories in the 1950s, initially finding little commercial success. His 1962 alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle earned Dick early acclaim, including a Hugo Award for Best Novel. He followed with science fiction novels such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik . His 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel. Following a series of religious experiences in February–March 1974, Dick's work engaged more explicitly with issues of theology, philosophy, and the nature of reality, as in such novels as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS . A collection of his non-fiction writing on these themes was published posthumously as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick . He died in 1982 of a stroke, aged 53.

In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. A variety of popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner , Total Recall , Minority Report , A Scanner Darkly , and The Adjustment Bureau . In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

✵ 16. December 1928 – 2. March 1982
Philip K. Dick photo
Philip K. Dick: 278   quotes 5   likes

Philip K. Dick Quotes

“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

Dreams , Way

“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

Books , World , Understanding

“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

Fate

“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

“Fish cannot carry guns.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS (1981)

Fish

“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?

Success

“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.

Personality

“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)

Forgetting

“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)

Children , Time

“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

Imagination , Childhood , Personality

“He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside.”

Philip K. Dick book Ubik

Source: Ubik

Reality

“Emigrate or Degenerate.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“How'd you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There'd be nothing to fear.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

Fear , Beer

“On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle

World , Evil

“The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?”

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

Source: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Bird , Singing

“Science Fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”

Philip K. Dick

"How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)

Knowledge , Science

“I'm tired and I want to rest; I want to get out of this and go lie down somewhere, off where it's dark and no one speaks. Forever.”

Philip K. Dick book Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb

Source: Dr. Bloodmoney

Lie

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

'Will you be all right?'

'I'll be all right,' he said, and thought, And I'm going to die. Both those are true, too.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. … I must be scientific.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Context: When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.... I must be scientific.

“There is evil! It's actual, like cement.

I can't believe it. I can't stand it.

Evil is not a view… it's an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle

World , Evil , Heart

“It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS (1981)

“I'd like to see you move up to the goat class, where I think you belong.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Thinking

“If the last to know he’s an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

“I love you,' Rachael said. 'If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide I'd score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test.”

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

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Love

“We are all insects. Groping towards something terrible or divine.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle

“It's easy to win. Anybody can win.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

“I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know. After all, if you are a Buddha you should be able to figure it out for yourself.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS

Idea

“What profit it a man if he gain the whole world but in this enterprise lose his soul?”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle

World , Soul

“The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS

“In a civil war… every side is wrong. It’s hopeless to try to untangle it. Everyone is a victim.”

Philip K. Dick book Time Out of Joint

Source: Time Out of Joint

War

“I have seen myself backward.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

“We do not have an ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

World , Effort

“Dilemma of a civilized man; body mobilized but danger obscure.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

“When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

“What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.”

Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion

Source: The Divine Invasion

Understanding , Thinking

“The odd thing in this world is that an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises.”

Philip K. Dick book Time Out of Joint

Source: Time Out of Joint

World , Idea

“It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I’m rotten. I’ve done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 7 (p. 112)

Courage , Evil

“Freiherr Hugo Reiss made a notation on his pad. Broach subject with SS General Otto Skorzeny, or better yet Otto Ohlendorf at Amt III of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Didn’t Ohlendorf head Einsatzgruppe D?”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle

“That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Light

“Madness, like small fish, runs in hosts, in vast numbers of instances.”

Philip K. Dick The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Page 236
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)

Fish , Madness

“Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof. Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him. He was seeing—them.”

Philip K. Dick book The Hanging Stranger

"The Hanging Stranger"
The Phillip K. Dick Reader

“You’re not just out of your body; you’re out of your mind, too.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 6 (p. 87)

“matter is plastic in the face of mind.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

“The highway construction truck tore up the street at forty miles an hour.”

Philip K. Dick

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

“It’s not religious fervor; it’s just a mean, very cruel streak.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 142)

“One long-past innocent day, in my prefolly youth, I came upon a statement in an undistinguished textbook on psychiatry that, as when Kant read Hume, woke me forever from my garden-of-eden slumber. "The psychotic does not merely think he sees four blue bivalves with floppy wings wandering up the wall; he does see them. An hallucination is not, strictly speaking, manufactured in the brain; it is received by the brain, like any 'real' sense datum, and the patient act in response to this to-him-very-real perception of reality in as logical a way as we do to our sense data. In any way to suppose he only 'thinks he sees it' is to misunderstand totally the experience of psychosis."”

Philip K. Dick

"Drugs, Hallucinations, and the Quest for Reality" (1964) quoting an unknown psychiatric text, reprinted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995) Lawrence Sutin, ed.

Youth , Way , Thinking , Reality

“This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just "What if…" It's "My God; what if…"”

Philip K. Dick

In frenzy and hysteria.
Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Love , God , Reading