
“It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.”
Young Men and Fire (1992)
“It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.”
The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)
"Computing a Theory of Everything" (2010)
As quoted in "Vertex Interviews Philip K. Dick" by Arthur Byron Cover, in Vertex, Vol. 1, no. 6 (February 1974) http://2010philipkdickfans.philipkdickfans.com/frank/vertexin.htm
Context: I started reading SF when I was about twelve and I read all I could, so any author who was writing about that time, I read. But there's no doubt who got me off originally and that was A. E. van Vogt. There was in van Vogt's writing a mysterious quality, and this was especially true in The World of Null A. All the parts of that book did not add up; all the ingredients did not make a coherency. Now some people are put off by that. They think that's sloppy and wrong, but the thing that fascinated me so much was that this resembled reality more than anybody else's writing inside or outside science fiction. … reality really is a mess, and yet it's exciting. The basic thing is, how frightened are you of chaos? And how happy are you with order? Van Vogt influenced me so much because he made me appreciate a mysterious chaotic quality in the universe which is not to be feared.
“He would make a good manager, but he had a little too much integrity to survive in a top job.”
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 12 (p. 161)