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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.

-Philip K. Dick

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But The Actual Touch

Philip K. Dick

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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.

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Reality Is Just A Point Of View.

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The Unconscious Is Selective, When It Learns What To Listen For.

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Matter Is Plastic In The Face Of Mind.

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The Only Real Failure Is To Fail Others.

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I Was Twelve When I Read My First Sf Magazine

Everything In Life Is Just For A While.

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Dilemma Of Civilized Man; Body Mobilized, But Danger Obscure.

If You Think This Universe Is Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others.

I'd Like To See You Move Up To The Goat Class, Where I Think You Belong.

No Matter How Long A Log Stays In The Water, It Doesn't Become A Crocodile.

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.

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Upon Him The Contempt Of Three Planets Descended.

I Like Her; I Could Watch Her The Rest Of My Life. She Has Breasts That Smile.

Whom The Gods Notice They Destroy.

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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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.

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.

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.

Be Happy Now Because Tomorrow You Are Dying.

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.

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.

She Makes Life Over, He Realized. She Controls Life, Whereas I Just Sit On My Can And Let It Happen To Me.

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.

(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.

Don't Never Participate In No Bad Scenes, He Reminded Himself; That Was His Motto In Life.

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.

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.

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?

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.

In A Nutshell-i Fear Authority But At The Same Time I Resent It-the Authority And My Own Fear. So I Rebel.

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.

I Mean, Knowing People, People Are Terrified Of The Unknown And They Want To Just Kill The Unknown.

Can We Consider The Universe Real, And If So, In What Way?

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.

Emigrate Or Degenerate.

I Have Seen Myself Backward.

The Will To Believe Chases Out The Rational Mind, Whenever And Wherever The Two Come Into Conflict.

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

My Major Preoccupation Is The Question, 'what Is Reality?'

Truth, She Thought. As Terrible As Death. But Harder To Find.

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.

Little Kids Are That Way; They Feel If Their Parents Aren't Watching What They Do Then What They Do Isn't Real.

Reality Denied Comes Back To Haunt.

If I'd Known It Was Harmless, I'd Have Killed It Myself!

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.

Every Time I See A Picture Of Stalin I Look Him Square In The Eye And I Say: You're A Meat Eater, Joseph.

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.

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.

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.

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

…we All Lie To Ourselves; We Tell Our Own Selves More Lies Than We Ever Do Other People.

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.

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.

Each Of Us Assumes Everyone Else Knows What He Is Doing. They All Assume We Know What We Are Doing. We Don't.

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.

I Never Liked The Idea Of Doing What A Machine Says. I Hate Having To Salute Something Built In A Factory.

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