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But At Least He Can Still See The Lights Below Us. Although Maybe For Him It Doesn't Matter.
-Philip K. Dick
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But At Least He

Philip K. Dick
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But At Least He Can Still See The Lights Below Us. Although Maybe For Him It Doesn't Matter.

Understanding the Quote: "but at least he can still see the lights below us. although..."

This quote by Philip K. Dick reflects deeply on the theme of light. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Light, Matter, Stills, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Philip K. Dick interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick is celebrated for insightful thoughts on light and matter. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Light
Matter
Stills
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Whom The Gods Notice They Destroy.
I Mean, Knowing People, People Are Terrified Of The Unknown And They Want To Just Kill The Unknown.
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Sometimes One Must Try Anything, It Is No Disgrace. On The Contrary, It Is A Sign Of Wisdom.
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How Much Of What We Call 'reality' Is Actually Out There Or Rather Within Our Own Head?
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Any System Which Says, This Is A Rotten World, Wait For The Next, Give Up, Do Nothing, Succumb--that May Be The Basic Lie And If We Participate In Believing It And Acting (or Rather Not Acting) On It We Involve Ourselves In The Lie And Suffer Dreadfully... Which Only Reinforces That Particular Lie.
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The Cries Of The Dead Are Terrible Indeed; You Should Try Not To Hear Them.
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It Is Futile To Try To Make The Universe Add Up. But I Guess We Must Go On Anyhow.
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Emigrate Or Degenerate.
Degenerates
Dilemma Of Civilized Man; Body Mobilized, But Danger Obscure.
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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.
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Barefoot Conducts His Seminars On His Houseboat In Sausalito. It Costs A Hundred Dollars To Find Out Why We Are On This Earth. You Also Get A Sandwich, But I Wasn't Hungry That Day. John Lennon Had Just Been Killed And I Think I Know Why We Are On This Earth; It's To Find Out That What You Love The Most Will Be Taken Away From You, Probably Due To An Error In High Places Rather Than By Design.
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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.
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Just Because Something Bears The Aspect Of The Inevitable One Should Not, Therefore, Go Along Willingly With It.
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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 Wind-up Toy.
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The Hell With The Newspapers. Nobody Reads The Letters To The Editor Column Except The Nuts. It's Enough To Get You Down.
Editors
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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.
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We Are In A Maze Which We Built, And Then We Fell Into, Now Can't Get Out. To Make The Game Into Something Real, Something More Than Merely An Intellectual Exercise, We Elected To Lose Our Exceptional Faculties, To Reduce Us An Entire Level. This Unfortunately, Includes A Loss Of Memory.
Memories
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Loss
What They Do Not Comprehend Is Man's Helplessness. I Am Weak, Small, Of No Consequence To The Universe. It Does Not Notice Me; I Live On Unseen. But Why Is That Bad? Isn't It That Way? Whom The Gods Notice They Destroy. Be Small... And You Will Escape The Jealousy Of The Great.
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Madness, Like Small Fish, Runs In Hosts, In Vast Numbers Of Instances.
Running
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I'm Not Much But I'm All I Have.
Optimistic
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Don't Try To Solve Serious Matters In The Middle Of The Night.
Depression
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Insomnia
The Logos Was Both That Which Thought, And The Thing Which It Thought: Thinker And Thought Together. The Universe, Then, Is Thinker And Thought, And Since We Are Part Of It, We As Humans Are, In The Final Analysis, Thoughts Of And Thinkers Of Those Thoughts.
Together
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There Was A Beauty In The Trash Of The Alleys Which I Had Never Noticed Before; My Vision Seemed Sharpened, Rather Than Impaired. As I Walked Along It Seemed To Me That The Flattened Beer Cans And Papers And Weeds And Junk Mail Had Been Arranged By The Wind Into Patterns; These Patterns, When I Scrutinized Them, Lay Distributed So As To Comprise A Visual Language.
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It's Not What Happened But How It Is Told.
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Where There's Dope, There's Hope!
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You Know How People Are About Not Taking Care Of An Animal; They Consider It Immoral And Antiempathic. I Mean, Technically It's Not A Crime Like It Was Right After Wwt But The Feeling's Still There.
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That Is The Artist's Job: Take Mineral Rock From Dark Silent Earth, Transform It Into Shining Light-reflecting Form From Sky.
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(insanity) Is Not Hubris, Not Pride; It Is Inflation Of The Ego To Its Ultimate - Confusion Between Him Who Worships And That Which Is Worshipped. Man Has Not Eaten God; God Has Eaten Man.
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Those Who Refused To Respond To The New Stimulus Would Perish. Adapt Or Perish.
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You're - Psychotic. There's Something Wrong With You." "i Know," Benteley Agreed. "i'm A Sick Man. And The More I See, The Sicker I Get. I'm So Sick I Think Everybody Else Is Sick And I'm The Only Healthy Person. That's Pretty Bad Off, Isn't It?
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Upon Him The Contempt Of Three Planets Descended.
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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.
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People Have Told Me That Everything About Me, Every Facet Of My Life, Psyche, Experiences, Dreams, And Fears, Are Laid Out Explicitly In My Writing, That From The Corpus Of My Work I Can Be Absolutely And Precisely Inferred. This Is True.
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No Man Is Infinitely Strong; For Every Creature That Runs, Flies, Hops Or Crawls There Is A Terminal Nemesis Which He Will Not Circumvent, Which Will Finally Do Him In.
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He Felt All At Once Like An Ineffectual Moth, Fluttering At The Windowpane Of Reality, Dimly Seeing It From Outside.
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Everything Is True Everything Anybody Has Ever Thought
Human Has Always Striven To Retain The Past, To Keep It Convincing; There's Nothing Wicked In That. Without It We Have No Continuity; We Have Only The Moment. And, Deprived Of The Past, The Moment - The Present - Has Little Meaning, If Any.
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I Mean, After All, You Have To Consider We're Only Made Out Of Dust. That's Admittedly Not Much To Go On And We Shouldn't Forget That. But Even Considering, I Mean It's Sort Of A Bad Beginning, We're Not Doing Too Bad. So I Personally Have Faith That Even In This Lousy Situation We're Faced With We Can Make It. You Get Me?
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A Weird Time In Which We Are Alive. We Can Travel Anywhere We Want, Even To Other Planets. And For What? To Sit Day After Day, Declining In Morale And Hope.
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Every Time I See A Picture Of Stalin I Look Him Square In The Eye And I Say: You're A Meat Eater, Joseph.
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I Want To Write About People I Love, And Put Them Into A Fictional World Spun Out Of My Own Mind, Not The World We Actually Have, Because The World We Actually Have Does Not Meet My Standards. Okay, So I Should Revise My Standards; I'm Out Of Step. I Should Yield To Reality. I Have Never Yielded To Reality. That's What Sf Is All About. If You Wish To Yield To Reality, Go Read Philip Roth; Read The New York Literary Establishment Mainstream Bestselling Writers
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I Became Educated To The Fact That The Greatest Pain Does Not Come Zooming Down From A Distant Planet, But From The Depths Of The Heart. Of Course, Both Could Happen; Your Wife And Child Could Leave You, And You Could Be Sitting Alone In Your Empty House With Nothing To Live For, And In Addition The Martians Could Bore Through The Roof And Get You.
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Can Anyone Alter Fate? All Of Us Combined... Or One Great Figure... Or Someone Strategically Placed, Who Happens To Be In The Right Spot. Chance. Accident. And Our Lives, Our World, Hanging On It.
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Each Of Us Assumes Everyone Else Knows What He Is Doing. They All Assume We Know What We Are Doing. We Don't...nothing Is Going On And Nobody Knows What It Is. Nobody Is Concealing Anything Except The Fact That He Does Not Understand Anything Anymore And Wishes He Could Go Home.
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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
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In A Society Of Criminals, The Innocent Man Goes To Jail.
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Grief Causes You To Leave Yourself. You Step Outside Your Narrow Little Pelt. And You Can’t Feel Grief Unless You’ve Had Love Before It - Grief Is The Final Outcome Of Love, Because It’s Love Lost. […] It’s The Cycle Of Love Completed: To Love, To Lose, To Feel Grief, To Leave, And Then To Love Again. Grief Is The Awareness That You Will Have To Be Alone, And There Is Nothing Beyond That Because Being Alone Is The Ultimate Final Destiny Of Each Individual Living Creature. That’s What Death Is, The Great Loneliness.
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Men And The World Are Mutually Toxic To Each Other.
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In A Sense, The Better You Adapt To School The Less Your Chances Are Of Later Adapting To The Actual World. So I Figure, The Worse You Adapt To School, The Better You Will Be Able To Handle Reality When You Finally Manage To Get Loose At Last From School, If That Ever Happens. But I Guess I Have What In The Military They Call A 'poor Attitude,' Which Means 'shape Up Or Ship Out.' I Always Elected To Ship Out.
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You Will Be Required To Do Wrong No Matter Where You Go. It Is The Basic Condition Of Life, To Be Required To Violate Your Own Identity. At Some Time, Every Creature Which Lives Must Do So. It Is The Ultimate Shadow, The Defeat Of Creation; This Is The Curse At Work, The Curse That Feeds On All Life. Everywhere In The Universe.
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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.
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Little Kids Are That Way; They Feel If Their Parents Aren't Watching What They Do Then What They Do Isn't Real.
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To Live Is To Be Haunted.
The Frogs Hopping Indoors Agree That We Are On A Prison Planet. They Themselves Are Frog Criminals That Were Convicted Of Doing Frog Crimes.
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For Each Person There Is A Sentence—a Series Of Words—which Has The Power To Destroy Them.
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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.
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Science Fiction Writers, I Am Sorry To Say, Really Do Not Know Anything.
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The Bird Is Gone, And In What Meadow Does It Now Sing?
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In This Dark World Where He Now Dwelt, Ugly Things And Surprising Things And Once In A Long While A Tiny Wondrous Thing Spilled Out At Him Constantly; He Could Count On Nothing.
Dark
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Long
Once A Guy Stood All Day Shaking Bugs From His Hair.
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It's Easy To Win. Anybody Can Win.
Sunset
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My Major Preoccupation Is The Question, 'what Is Reality ?' Many Of My Stories And Novels Deal With Psychotic States Or Drug-induced States By Which I Can Present The Concept Of A Multiverse Rather Than A Universe. Music And Sociology Are Themes In My Novels, Also Radical Political Trends; In Particular I've Written About Fascism And My Fear Of It.
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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 Of Judgment.
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But An Artist, He Realized. Or Rather So-called Artist. Bohemian. That's Closer To It. The Artistic Life Without The Talent.
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He Started Keeping A Journal - Had Been, In Fact, Secretly Doing So For Some Time: The Furtive Act Of A Deranged Person.
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The Person I Am Now, Compared With The Person In The Dream, Has Been Baffled And Defeated And Only Supposes He Enjoys A Full Life. In The Dreams, I See What A Full Life Really Consists Of, And It Is Not What I Really Have.
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Defeated
Matter Is Plastic In The Face Of Mind.
Mind
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Writing Is A Lonely Way Of Life. You Shut Yourself Up In Your Study And Work And Work.
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Life In Anaheim, California, Was A Commercial For Itself, Endlessly Replayed. Nothing Changed; It Just Spread Out Farther And Farther In The Form Of Neon Ooze. What There Was Always More Of Had Been Congealed Into Permanence Long Ago, As If The Automatic Factory That Cranked Out These Objects Had Jammed In The On Position.
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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.
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Thinking
Tragedy
If You Think This Universe Is Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others.
Inspirational
Life
Optimistic
I, For One, Bet On Science As Helping Us. I Have Yet To See How It Fundamentally Endangers Us, Even With The H-bomb Lurking About. Science Has Given Us More Lives Than It Has Taken; We Must Remember That.
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Bombs
Helping
But At Least He Can Still See The Lights Below Us. Although Maybe For Him It Doesn't Matter.
Light
Matter
Stills
A Human Being Without The Proper Empathy Or Feeling Is The Same As An Android Built So As To Lack It, Either By Design Or Mistake. We Mean, Basically, Someone Who Does Not Care About The Fate Which His Fellow Living Creatures Fall Victim To; He Stands Detached, A Spectator, Acting Out By His Indifference John Donne's Theorem That "no Man Is An Island," But Giving That Theorem A Twist: That Which Is A Mental And A Moral Island Is Not A Man.
Mistake
Fall
Mean
Maybe I'll Go Where I Can See Stars, He Said To Himself As The Car Gained Velocity And Altitude; It Headed Away From San Francisco, Toward The Uninhabited Desolation To The North. To The Place Where No Living Thing Would Go. Not Unless It Felt That The End Had Come.
Stars
San Francisco
Car
Fat Realized That One Of Two Possibilities Existed And Only Two; Either Dr. Stone Was Totally Insane – Not Just Insane But Totally So – Or Else In An Artful, Professional Fashion He Had Gotten Fat To Talk; He Had Drawn Fat Out And Now Knew That Fat Was Totally Insane.
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I Think That, Like In My Writing, Reality Is Always A Soap Bubble, Silly Putty Thing Anyway. In The Universe People Are In, People Put Their Hands Through The Walls, And It Turns Out They're Living In Another Century Entirely. I Often Have The Feeling — And It Does Show Up In My Books — That This Is All Just A Stage.
Wall
Silly
Book
He Sat Watching The People Go By, Wondering How A Thing Of This Sort Could Have Come About, I Must Have Let Myself Get Mixed Up In Something Horrible, He Thought ... Probably She's The One Who Did It; I Have No Control Of Myself Or Anything That's Happened. So Now I'm Waking Up. I'm Awake, He Thought ... I've Been Destroyed And Now That I'm Awake All I Can Do Is Realize It ... The Shock Of Getting Up There And Telling That Account Made Me See. Mixture Of Lies And Bits Of Truth. Woven Together. Unable To See Where Each Starts.
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I Guess That's The Story Of Life: What You Most Fear Never Happens, But What You Most Yearn For Never Happens Either. This Is The Difference Between Life And Fiction. I Suppose It's A Good Trade-off. But I'm Not Sure.
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In My Writing I Even Question The Universe; I Wonder Out Loud If It Is Real, And I Wonder Out Loud If All Of Us Are Real.
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I Never Liked The Idea Of Doing What A Machine Says. I Hate Having To Salute Something Built In A Factory.
Hate
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We Should Take Mothers In High Seas And Drown Them There, They Are As Poisonous As Lead In The Air.
Mother
Air
Sea
The Wisest People Are The Clowns, Like Harpo Marx, Who Would Not Speak. If I Could Have Anything I Want I Would Like God To Listen To What Harpo Was Not Saying, And Understand Why Harpo Would Not Talk.
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People
Want
Maybe Each Human Being Lives In A Unique World, A Private World, A World Different From Those Inhabited And Experienced By All Other Humans.
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Solitude
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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.
Song
Writing
Eerie
I Have Seen Myself Backward.
The Will To Believe Chases Out The Rational Mind, Whenever And Wherever The Two Come Into Conflict.
Believe
Umpires
Two
No Structure, Even An Artificial One, Enjoys The Process Of Entropy. It Is The Ultimate Fate Of Everything, And Everything Resists It.
Fate
Chaos
Structure
Reality Is That Which, When You Stop Believing In It, Doesn't Go Away.
Atheist
Real
Believe
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.
Real
Book
Mind
Death Hides Within Every Religion. And At Any Time It Can Flash Forth-not With Healing In Its Wings But With Poison, With That Which Wounds.
Healing
Wings
Poison
To Fight The Empire Is To Be Infected By Its Derangement.... Whoever Defeats The Empire Becomes The Empire; It Proliferates Like A Virus.
Fighting
Viruses
Empires
Life Is Short, He Thought. Art, Or Something Not Life, Is Long, Stretching Out Endless, Like [a] Concrete Worm. Flat, White, Unsmoothed By Any Passage Over Or Across It.
Art
Life Is Short
White
"do You Have Information That There's An Android In The Cast? I'd Be Glad To Help You, And If I Were An Android Would I Be Glad To Help You?" "an Android," He Said, "doesn't Care What Happens To Another Android. That's One Of The Indications We Look For." "then," Miss Luft Said, "you Must Be An Android."
Missing
Looks
Care
The Basic Tool For The Manipulation Of Reality Is The Manipulation Of Words. If You Can Control The Meaning Of Words, You Can Control The People Who Must Use The Words.
Writing
Reality
People
The Unconscious Is Selective, When It Learns What To Listen For.
Unconscious
Selective
When You Are Crazy You Learn To Keep Quiet.
Crazy
Quiet
Well, I Hate To Admit It, But It Is Possible That There Is (one) Such A Thing As Telepathy And (two) That The Ceti Project's Idea That We Might Communicate With Extraterrestrial Beings Via Telepathy Is Possibly A Reasonable Idea--if Telepathy Exists And If Etis Exist. Otherwise We Are Trying To Communicate With Someone Who Doesn't Exist With A System Which Doesn't Work.
Hate
Ideas
Two
We Hypostatize Information Into Objects. Rearrangement Of Objects Is Change In The Content Of The Information; The Message Has Changed. This Is A Language Which We Have Lost The Ability To Read. We Ourselves Are A Part Of This Language; Changes In Us Are Changes In The Content Of The Information. We Ourselves Are Information-rich; Information Enters Us, Is Processed And Is Then Projected Outward Once More, Now In An Altered Form. We Are Not Aware That We Are Doing This, That In Fact This Is All We Are Doing.
Information
Messages
Facts
Certainly It Constitutes Bad News If The People Who Agree With You Are Buggier Than Batshit.
People
News
Agree
Then It Is In Me, Too, The Psychotic Streak. A Psychotic World We Live In. The Madmen Are In Power. How Long Have We Known This? Faced This? And-how Many Of Us Do Know It? ... Perhaps If You Know You Are Insane Then You Are Not Insane. Or You Are Becoming Sane, Finally. Waking Up. I Suppose Only A Few Are Aware Of All This. Isolated Persons Here And There. But The Broad Masses-what Do They Think? All These Hundreds Of Thousands In This City, Here. Do They Imagine That They Live In A Sane World? Or Do They Guess, Glimpse, The Truth...?
Depression
Thinking
Cities
The Day Came. The Wrath Descended. Sin, Guilt, And Retribution? The Manic Psychoses Of Those Entities We Referred To As States, Institutions, Systems - The Powers, The Thrones, The Dominations - The Things Which Perpetually Merge With Men And Emerge From Them? Our Darkness, Externalized And Visible? However You Look Upon These Matters, The Critical Point Was Reached. The Wrath Descended.
Men
Psychosis
Wrath
Whom The Gods Notice They Destroy. Be Small... And You Will Escape The Jealousy Of The Great.
What Scared Me The Most Was When My Father Would Put On The Gasmask. His Face Would Disappear... This Was Not A Human Being At All.
Father
Faces
Scared
But The Actual Touch Of Her Lingered, Inside His Heart. That Remained. In All The Years Of His Life Ahead, The Long Years Without Her, With Never Seeing Her Or Hearing From Her Or Knowing Anything About Her, If She Was Alive Or Happy Or Dead Or What, That Touch Stayed Locked Within Him, Sealed In Himself, And Never Went Away. That One Touch Of Her Hand.
Heart
Hands
Years
The Distinction Between Sanity And Insanity Is Narrower Than A Razor’s Edge, Sharper Than A Hound’s Tooth, More Agile Than A Mule Deer. It Is More Elusive Than The Merest Phantom. Perhaps It Does Not Even Exist; Perhaps It Is A Phantom.
Insanity
Teeth
Doe
Fish Cannot Carry Guns.
Gun
Fishes
When He Turned On The Tape-transport Once More, Arctor Was Saying, "-- As Near As I Can Figure Out, God Is Dead." Luckman Answered, "i Didn't Know He Was Sick.
Sick
Tape
Figures
The Real Origin Of Science Fiction Lay In The Seventeeth-century Novels Of Exploration In Fabulous Lands. Therefore Jules Verne's Story Of Travel To The Moon Is Not Science Fiction Because They Go By Rocket But Because Of Where They Go. It Would Be As Much Science Fiction If They Went By Rubber Band.
Real
Moon
Land
Truth, She Thought. As Terrible As Death. But Harder To Find.
Terrible
Harder
There Exists, For Everyone, A Sentence - A Series Of Words - That Has The Power To Destroy You. Another Sentence Exists, Another Series Of Words, That Could Heal You. If You're Lucky You Will Get The Second, But You Can Be Certain Of Getting The First.
Lucky
Firsts
Certain
Every Junkie, He Thought, Is A Recording.
Junkie
What Constitutes The Authentic Human Being?
Humans
Human Beings
I Am Ubik. Before The Universe Was, I Am. I Made The Suns. I Made The Worlds. I Created The Lives And The Places They Inhabit; I Move Them Here, I Put Them There. They Go As I Say, Then Do As I Tell Them. I Am The Word And My Name Is Never Spoken, The Name Which No One Knows. I Am Called Ubik, But That Is Not My Name. I Am. I Shall Always Be.
Moving
Names
World
The True Measure Of A Man Is Not His Intelligence Or How High He Rises In This Freak Establishment. No, The True Measure Of A Man Is This: How Quickly Can He Respond To The Needs Of Others And How Much Of Himself He Can Give.
Men
Giving
Beautiful Life
When I Believe, I Am Crazy. When I Don’t Believe, I Suffer Psychotic Depression.
Crazy
Believe
Suffering
A Child Of Today Can Detect A Lie Quicker Than The Wisest Adult Of Two Decades Ago. When I Want To Know What Is True, I Ask My Children.
Children
Lying
Two
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.
Ideas
Twists
Odd Things
Basically, Sherri's Idea Had To Do With Bringing Fat's Mind Down From The Cosmic And The Abstract To The Particular. She Had Hatched Out The Practical Notion That Nothing Is More Real Than A Large World War Two Soviet Tank.
Real
War
Ideas
Why Is Love So Good...? You Love Someone And They Leave. They Come Home One Day And You Say "what's Happening?" And They Say, "i Got A Better Offer Someplace Else," And There They Go, Out Of Your Life Forever, And After That Until You're Dead You're Carrying Around This Huge Hunk Of Love With No One To Give It To. And If You Do Find Someone To Give It To, The Same Thing Happens All Over.
Home
Giving
Forever
The Empire Is The Institution, The Codification, Of Derangement; It Is Insane And Imposes Its Insanity On Us By Violence, Since Its Nature Is A Violent One.
Insanity
Insane
Empires
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.
Mean
Men
Addiction
Each Of Us Assumes Everyone Else Knows What He Is Doing. They All Assume We Know What We Are Doing. We Don't.
Assuming
Knows
My Major Preoccupation Is The Question, 'what Is Reality?'
Reality
Preoccupation
Majors
There Are No Private Lives. This A Most Important Aspect Of Modern Life. That One Of The Biggest Transformations We Have Seen In Human Life In Our Society Is The Diminution Of The Sphere Of The Private. That We Must Reasonably Now All Regard The Fact That There Are No Secrets And Nothing Is Private. Everything Is Public.
Secret
Important
Modern Life
There Will Come A Time When It Isn't 'they're Spying On Me Through My Phone' Anymore. Eventually, It Will Be 'my Phone Is Spying On Me'.
Technology
Phones
The Pain, So Unexpected And Undeserved, Had For Some Reason Cleared Away The Cobwebs. I Realized I Didn’t Hate The Cabinet Door, I Hated My Life… My House, My Family, My Backyard, My Power Mower. Nothing Would Ever Change; Nothing New Could Ever Be Expected. It Had To End, And It Did. Now In The Dark World Where I Dwell, Ugly Things, And Surprising Things, And Sometimes Little Wondrous Things, Spill Out In Me Constantly, And I Can Count On Nothing.
Pain
Hate
Dark
In Washington And Moscow They Are Saying, 'man Has Finally Come Of Age; He Doesn't Need Paternalistic Help.' Which Is Another Way Of Saying, 'we Have Abolished That Help, And In Its Place We Will Rule,' Offering No Help At All: Taking But Not Giving, Ruling But Not Obeying, Telling But Not Listening, Taking Life And Not Giving It. The Slayers Govern Now, Without Interference; The Dreams Of Mankind Have Become Empty.
Dream
Men
Offering
Skill Is A Function Of Chance. It’s An Intuitive Best-use Of Chance Situations.
Skills
Use
Chance
When Two People Dream The Same Dream, It Ceases To Be An Illusion.
Dream
Two
People
A Man Is An Angel That Has Gone Deranged.
Angel
Men
Gone
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.
Said
Dies
I'd Like To See You Move Up To The Goat Class, Where I Think You Belong.
Moving
Thinking
Class
Giving Me A A New Idea Is Like Handing A Cretin A Gun, But I Do Thank You Anyhow, Bang Bang.
Gun
Ideas
Giving
You Know What The Doctor Said To Me To Cheer Me Up?" Fat Said. "there Are Worse Diseases Than Cancer." "did He Show You Slides?" We Both Laughed. When You Are Nearly Crazy With Grief, You Laugh At What You Can.
Cheer
Crazy
Cancer
You Must Beware Of Seeing Malice Behind Accidental Injury.
Injury
Malice
Behinds
Don't Never Participate In No Bad Scenes, He Reminded Himself; That Was His Motto In Life.
Motto
Scene
Sometimes I Wish I Knew How To Go Crazy. I Forget How.
Crazy
Wish
Sometimes
How Undisturbed, The Sleep Of The Foolish.
Sleep
Foolish
It Really Seems To Me That In The Midst Of Great Tragedy, There Is Always The Horrible Possibility That Something Terribly Funny Will Happen.
Tragedy
Possibility
Midst
Strange How Paranoia Can Link Up With Reality Now And Then.
Reality
Links
Strange
So We And Our Elaborately Evolving Computers May Meet Each Other Halfway. Someday A Human Being, Named Perhaps Fred White, May Shoot A Robot Named Pete Something-or-other, Which Has Come Out Of A General Electric Factory, And To His Surprise See It Weep And Bleed. And The Dying Robot May Shoot Back And, To Its Surprise, See A Wisp Of Gray Smoke Arise From The Electric Pump That It Supposed Was Mr. White's Beating Heart. It Would Be Rather A Great Moment Of Truth For Both Of Them.
Heart
White
Dying
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.
Dream
Psychosis
Way
In A Civil War… Every Side Is Wrong. It’s Hopeless To Try To Untangle It. Everyone Is A Victim.
War
Trying
Sides
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 Judgment. 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.
Memories
Moving
Errors
Activity Does Not Necessarily Mean Life.
Life
Mean
Doe
This Is A Mournful Discovery. 1)those Who Agree With You Are Insane 2)those Who Do Not Agree With You Are In Power.
Discovery
Insane
Paranoia
Either I've Invented A Whole New Logic Or, Ahem, I'm Not Playing With A Full Deck.
Statistics
Logic
Deck
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.
Reading
Writing
Doubt
Odd That The Brain Could Function On Its Own, Without Acquainting Him With Its Purposes, Its Reasons. But The Brain Was An Organ, Like The Spleen, Heart, Kidneys. And They Went About Their Private Activities. So Why Not The Brain?
Heart
Brain
Purpose
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.
Eye
Knowing
Childhood
The Inanity Of Her Remark Infuriated Him. 'good Grief Don't You Understand Janet? At This Point I'm Thoroughly Delusional. I'm As Mentally Ill As It's Possible To Be. It's Incredible That I Can Communicate With You At All. It's A Credit To My Ego-strength That I'm Not At This Point Totally Autistic.
Grief
Ego
Credit
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.
Simple
Principles
Facts
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.
Running
Children
Play
Even If All Life On Our Planet Is Destroyed, There Must Be Other Life Somewhere Which We Know Nothing Of. It Is Impossible That Ours Is The Only World; There Must Be World After World Unseen By Us, In Some Region Or Dimension That We Simply Do Not Perceive. Even Though I Can't Prove That, Even Though It Isn't Logical - I Believe It.
Believe
Unseen
World
In A One-party System There Is Always A Landslide.
Party
Landslides
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.
Taken
Idols
Giving
Why Does A Man Cry? He Wondered. Not Like A Woman; Not For That. Not For Sentiment. A Man Cries Over The Loss Of Something, Something Alive. A Man Can Cry Over A Sick Animal That He Knows Won't Make It. The Death Of A Child: A Man Can Cry For That. But Not Because Things Are Sad. A Man, He Thought, Cries Not For The Future Or The Past But For The Present.
Children
Loss
Animal
The Painting Showed A Hairless, Oppressed Creature With A Head Like An Inverted Pear, Its Hands Clapped In Horror To Its Ears, Its Mouth Open In A Vast, Soundless Scream. Twisted Ripples Of The Creature's Torment, Echoes Of Its Cry, Flooded Out Into The Air Surrounding It; The Man Or Woman, Whichever It Was, Had Become Contained By Its Own Howl. It Had Covered Its Ears Against Its Own Sound. The Creature Stood On A Bridge And No One Else Was Present; The Creature Screamed In Isolation. Cut Off By - Or Despite - Its Outcry.
Cutting
Men
Echoes
I Think Great Art Should Play A Part In The Ordinary Man's Life, Don't You? It Can Make His Existence So Much Richer And More Meaningful.
Meaningful
Art
Men
A Lot Can Be Said For The Infinite Mercies Of God, But The Smarts Of A Good Pharmacist, When You Get Down To It, Is Worth More.
Smart
Mercy Of God
Infinite
Are We To Assist It In Gaining Power In Order To Save Our Lives? Is That The Paradox Of Our Earthly Situation?
Order
Gaining Power
Life Is
In A Nutshell-i Fear Authority But At The Same Time I Resent It-the Authority And My Own Fear. So I Rebel.
Rebel
Authority
Resent
The Pre-socratic Greek Philosopher Parmenides Taught That The Only Things That Are Real Are Things Which Never Change... And The Pre-socratic Greek Philosopher Heraclitus Taught That Everything Changes. If You Superimpose Their Two Views, You Get This Result: Nothing Is Real.
Real
Views
Two
Be Happy Now Because Tomorrow You Are Dying.
Dying
Tomorrow
Reality Denied Comes Back To Haunt.
Reality
Psychology
Denied
You Mean Old Books?" "stories Written Before Space Travel But About Space Travel." "how Could There Have Been Stories About Space Travel Before --" "the Writers," Pris Said, "made It Up.
Book
Mean
Space
Can We Consider The Universe Real, And If So, In What Way?
Real
Statistics
Way
This, To Me, Is The Ultimately Heroic Trait Of Ordinary People; They Say No To The Tyrant And They Calmly Take The Consequences Of This Resistance.
Tyrants
People
Resistance
She Makes Life Over, He Realized. She Controls Life, Whereas I Just Sit On My Can And Let It Happen To Me.
Lifestyle
Happens
He Entered The Elevator And Together They Moved Closer To God
Together
Elevators
Moved
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.
Sorry
Writing
Fiction
Because Today We Live In A Society In Which Spurious Realities Are Manufactured By The Media, By Governments, By Big Corporations, By Religious Groups, Political Groups... So I Ask, In My Writing, What Is Real? Because Unceasingly We Are Bombarded With Pseudo-realities Manufactured By Very Sophisticated People Using Very Sophisticated Electronic Mechanisms. I Do Not Distrust Their Motives; I Distrust Their Power. They Have A Lot Of It. And It Is An Astonishing Power: That Of Creating Whole Universes, Universes Of The Mind. I Ought To Know. I Do The Same Thing.
Religious
Real
Writing
There Is No Route Out Of The Maze. The Maze Shifts As You Move Through It, Because It Is Alive.
Inspirational
Life
Moving
No Matter How Long A Log Stays In The Water, It Doesn't Become A Crocodile.
Long
Water
Matter
I Was Twelve When I Read My First Sf Magazine
Twelve
Magazines
Firsts
But As He Plodded Along A Vague And Almost Hallucinatory Pall Hazed Over His Mind; He Found Himself At One Point, With No Notion Of How It Could Be, A Step From An Almost Certain Fatal Cliffside Fall—falling Humiliatingly And Helplessly, He Thought; On And On, With No One Even To Witness It. Here There Existed No One To Record His Or Anyone Else's Degradation, And Any Courage Or Pride Which Might Manifest Itself Here At The End Would Go Unmarked: The Dead Stones, The Dust-stricken Weeds Dry And Dying, Perceived Nothing, Recollected Nothing, About Him Or Themselves.
Weed
Fall
Pride
Many Men Talk Like Philosophers And Live Like Fools.
Men
Fool
Philosopher
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 .
Philosophy
Law
Gunpowder
The Most Dangerous Kind Of Person... Is One Who Is Afraid Of His Own Shadow.
Fear
Shadow
Kind
How'd You Like To Gaze At A Beer Can Throughout Eternity? It Might Not Be So Bad. There'd Be Nothing To Fear.
Beer
Might
Eternity
My Life And Creative Work Are Justified And Completed By Blade Runner.
Creative
Blade Runner
Justified
It Is Amazing That When Someone Else Spouts The Nonsense You Yourself Believe You Can Readily Perceive It As Nonsense
Believe
Believe You Can
Nonsense
We Have Entered A Moment When We Are Alone. We Cannot Get Assistance, As Before. Well, Mr. Tagomi Thought, Perhaps That Too Is Good. Or Can Be Made Good. One Must Still Try To Find The Way.
Trying
Way
Moments
The Church Of My Choice Is The Free, Open World.
Choices
Church
World
Amazed, Fat Said, "she's Decomposing And Yet She's Still Giving Birth?" "only To Monsters," Dr. Stone Said.
Giving
Stones
Monsters
God Is Dead,' Nick Said. 'they Found His Carcass In 2019. Floating In Space Near Alpha.' 'they Found The Remains Of An Organism Advanced Several Thousand Times Over What We Are,' Charley Said. 'and Evidently Could Create Habitable Worlds And Populate Them With Living Organisms, Derived From Itself. But That Doesn't Prove It Was God.
Space
Floating
World
And Of Course, In My Writing, There Is The Constant Theme Of Music, Love Of, Preoccupation With, Music. Music Is The Single Thread Making My Life Into A Coherency.
Writing
Music Love
Preoccupation
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.
Lying
Tired
Dark
How Can Justice Fall Victim, Ever, To What Is Right?
Fall
Justice
Victim
The Tragedy In His Life Already Existed. To Love An Atmospheric Spirit. That Was The Real Sorrow. Hopelessness Itself. Nowhere On The Printed Page, Nowhere In The Annals Of Man, Would Her Name Appear: No Local Habitation, No Name. There Are Girls Like That, He Thought, And Those You Love Most, The Ones Where There Is No Hope Because It Has Eluded You At The Very Moment You Close Your Hands Around It.
Love
Girl
Real
The Problem With Introspection Is That It Has No End.
Meditation
Problem
Ends
…we All Lie To Ourselves; We Tell Our Own Selves More Lies Than We Ever Do Other People.
Lying
Self
People
Madness Has Its Own Dynamism. It Just Goes On.
Goes On
Madness
Dynamism
I Never Felt Like That Before. Maybe It Could Be Depression, Like You Get. I Can Understand How You Suffer Now When You're Depressed; I Always Thought You Liked It And I Thought You Could Have Snapped Yourself Out Any Time, If Not Alone Then My Means Of The Mood Organ. But When You Get That Depressed You Don't Care. Apathy, Because You've Lose A Sense Of Worth. It Doesn't Matter Whether You Feel Better Because You Have No Worth.
Mean
Feel Better
Suffering
We Are Served By Organic Ghosts, He Thought, Who, Speaking And Writing, Pass Through This Our New Environment. Watching, Wise, Physical Ghosts From The Full-life World, Elements Of Which Have Become For Us Invading But Agreeable Splinters Of A Substance That Pulsates Like A Former Heart.
Wise
Writing
Heart
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