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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.

-Philip K. Dick

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In A Sense, The

Philip K. Dick

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

No Structure, Even An Artificial One, Enjoys The Process Of Entropy. It Is The Ultimate Fate Of Everything, And Everything Resists It.

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.

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What Is Possible And What Is Not Possible Is Not Objectively Known But Is, Rather, A Subjective Belief On The Part Of The Author And Of The Reader.

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.

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.

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

Those Who Refused To Respond To The New Stimulus Would Perish. Adapt Or Perish.

He Started Keeping A Journal - Had Been, In Fact, Secretly Doing So For Some Time: The Furtive Act Of A Deranged Person.

I Must Admit That The Existence Of Disneyland (which I Know Is Real) Proves That We Are Not Living In Judaea In 50 Ad. . . . Saint Paul Would Never Go Near Disneyland. Only Children, Tourists, And Visiting Soviet High Officials Ever Go To Disneyland. Saints Do Not.

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.

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.

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.

Men And The World Are Mutually Toxic To Each Other.

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.

Activity Does Not Necessarily Mean Life.

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It Is Sometimes An Appropriate Response To Reality To Go Insane.

Upon Him The Contempt Of Three Planets Descended.

Sometimes I Wish I Knew How To Go Crazy. I Forget How.

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.

Science Fiction Writers, I Am Sorry To Say, Really Do Not Know Anything.

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.

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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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.

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

When Two People Dream The Same Dream, It Ceases To Be An Illusion.

How'd You Like To Gaze At A Beer Can Throughout Eternity? It Might Not Be So Bad. There'd Be Nothing To Fear.

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.

It Is Amazing That When Someone Else Spouts The Nonsense You Yourself Believe You Can Readily Perceive It As Nonsense

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My Schedule For Today Lists A Six-hour Self-accusatory Depression.

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How Undisturbed, The Sleep Of The Foolish.

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"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."

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Whom The Gods Notice They Destroy.

A Man Is An Angel That Has Gone Deranged.

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.

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.

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I Will Never Fully Understand; That Is The Nature Of Such Creatures. Or Is This Inner Truth Now, This That Is Happening To Me? I Will Wait. I Will See. Which It Is. Perhaps It Is Both.

Madness Has Its Own Dynamism. It Just Goes On.

Giving Me A A New Idea Is Like Handing A Cretin A Gun, But I Do Thank You Anyhow, Bang Bang.

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Reality Is That Which, When You Stop Believing In It, Doesn't Go Away.

Sometimes One Must Try Anything, It Is No Disgrace. On The Contrary, It Is A Sign Of Wisdom.

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

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.

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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My Life And Creative Work Are Justified And Completed By Blade Runner.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Once A Guy Stood All Day Shaking Bugs From His Hair.

Be Happy Now Because Tomorrow You Are Dying.

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

This Is A Mournful Discovery. 1)those Who Agree With You Are Insane 2)those Who Do Not Agree With You Are In Power.

He Felt All At Once Like An Ineffectual Moth, Fluttering At The Windowpane Of Reality, Dimly Seeing It From Outside.

Amazed, Fat Said, "she's Decomposing And Yet She's Still Giving Birth?" "only To Monsters," Dr. Stone Said.

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.

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.

Fear Can Make You Do More Wrong Than Hate Or Jealousy. If You’re Afraid You Don’t Commit Yourself To Life Completely; Fear Makes You Always, Always Hold Something Back. You Shouldn’t Be Alone. It’s Killing You; It’s Undermining You. All The Time, Every Day, You Should Be Somewhere With People.

Everything Is True Everything Anybody Has Ever Thought

The Silence Of The World Could Not Rein Back It's Greed. Not Any Longer. Not When It Had Virtually Won.

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 .

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.

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.

How Much Of What We Call 'reality' Is Actually Out There Or Rather Within Our Own Head?

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.

Maybe Each Human Being Lives In A Unique World, A Private World, A World Different From Those Inhabited And Experienced By All Other Humans.

Madness, Like Small Fish, Runs In Hosts, In Vast Numbers Of Instances.

When You Are Crazy You Learn To Keep Quiet.

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.

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

But An Artist, He Realized. Or Rather So-called Artist. Bohemian. That's Closer To It. The Artistic Life Without The Talent.

Insanity - To Have To Construct A Picture Of One's Life, By Making Inquiries Of Others.

I Have Seen Myself Backward.

Perhaps If You Know You Are Insane Then You Are Not Insane. Or You Are Becoming Sane, Finally.

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

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

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.

You Must Beware Of Seeing Malice Behind Accidental Injury.

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.

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.

There Is No Route Out Of The Maze. The Maze Shifts As You Move Through It, Because It Is Alive.

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.

Fish Cannot Carry Guns.

We Should Take Mothers In High Seas And Drown Them There, They Are As Poisonous As Lead In The Air.

Certainly It Constitutes Bad News If The People Who Agree With You Are Buggier Than Batshit.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Guilt -- If There Was Any Guilt -- Spread Out And Diffused Itself Over Everybody And Everything. . . . Perhaps At Some Point In Time, At Some Spot In The World, A Moment Of Responsibility Existed.

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.

Activity Does Not Necessarily Mean Life. Quasars Are Active. And A Monk Meditating Is Not Inanimate.

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.

Every Junkie, He Thought, Is A Recording.

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...?

I'm A Strange Person. Sometimes I Hardly Know What I'm Going To Do Or Say Next. Sometimes I Seem A Stranger To Myself. Sometimes What I Do Surprises Me And I Can't Understand Why I Do It.

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.

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.

What Constitutes The Authentic Human Being?

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

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.

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.

Reality Denied Comes Back To Haunt.

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.

The Church Of My Choice Is The Free, Open World.

Where There's Dope, There's Hope!

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.

The Only Real Failure Is To Fail Others.

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.

To Live Is To Be Haunted.

For Each Person There Is A Sentence—a Series Of Words—which Has The Power To Destroy Them.

Matter Is Plastic In The Face Of Mind.

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.

That Is The Artist's Job: Take Mineral Rock From Dark Silent Earth, Transform It Into Shining Light-reflecting Form From Sky.

In A Society Of Criminals, The Innocent Man Goes To Jail.

I'm Not Much But I'm All I Have.

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.

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.

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.

In A One-party System There Is Always A Landslide.

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.

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.

Many Men Talk Like Philosophers And Live Like Fools.

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.

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

God Can Be Good And Terrible-not In Succession-but At The Same Time. This Is Why We Seek A Mediator Between Us And Him; We Approach Him Through The Mediating Priest And Attenuate And Enclose Him Through The Sacraments. It Is For Our Own Safety: To Trap Him Within Confines Which Render Him Safe.

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

Maybe Each Human Being Lives In A Unique World, A Private World Different From Those Inhabited And Experienced By All Other Humans. . . If Reality Differs From Person To Person, Can We Speak Of Reality Singular, Or Shouldn't We Really Be Talking About Plural Realities? And If There Are Plural Realities, Are Some More True (more Real) Than Others?

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.

Emigrate Or Degenerate.

He Entered The Elevator And Together They Moved Closer To God

I Am A Reader. I Am A Writer. People Assume I Do These Things To Escape. You Couldn't Be More Right. I'm Escaping A World I Don't Like. A World I Have No Control In. In This World, I Am Nothing. I Am A Color, A Height, A Weight, A Number. But In The World Of Books And Writing, I Am Amazing. I Am Powerful. I Am Different. People Are Better. Worlds Are Endless. Change Is Possible. Life Is Manageable.

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.

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.

The Problem With Introspection Is That It Has No End.

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.

Don't Try To Solve Serious Matters In The Middle Of The Night.

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.

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?

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

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.

The Hell With The Newspapers. Nobody Reads The Letters To The Editor Column Except The Nuts. It's Enough To Get You Down.

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.

Unless We Can Psychologically Accommodate Change, We Ourselves Begin To Die, Inwardly. What I Am Saying Is That Objects, Customs, Habits, And Ways Of Life Must Perish So That The Authentic Human Being Can Live. And It Is The Authentic Human Being Who Matters Most, The Viable, Elastic Organism Which Can Bounce Back, Absorb, And Deal With The New.

Just Because Something Bears The Aspect Of The Inevitable One Should Not, Therefore, Go Along Willingly With It.

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.

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

Everything In Life Is Just For A While.

How Can Justice Fall Victim, Ever, To What Is Right?

It Really Seems To Me That In The Midst Of Great Tragedy, There Is Always The Horrible Possibility That Something Terribly Funny Will Happen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Strange How Paranoia Can Link Up With Reality Now And Then.

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.

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

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.

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