Quotes from book

A Scanner Darkly

“A psychologist said, “They used to talk about seeing only ‘reflections’ of reality. Not reality itself. The main thing wrong with a reflection is not that it isn’t real, but that it’s reversed.””

“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.”

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

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

“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.”

“Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”

“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.”

“It's easy to win. Anybody can win.”

“I have seen myself backward.”

“Life… is only heavy and none else; there is only the one trip, all heavy. Heavy that leads to the grave. For everyone and everything.”

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

“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.”

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

“Everything in life is just for a while.”

“It sounds like they’re saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That’s a contradiction.”

“Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.”

““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.””

“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.”

“That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe. All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected. It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all.”