Philip K. Dick

Reality denied comes back to haunt.

My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.

It is futile to try to make the universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.

Sometimes one must try anything, it is no disgrace. On the contrary, it is a sign of wisdom.

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'.

Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.

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

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.

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.

This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.

I mean, knowing people, people are terrified of the unknown and they want to just kill the unknown.

The most dangerous kind of person... is one who is afraid of his own shadow.

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.

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.

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.

Everything in life is just for a while.

I'm not much but I'm all I have.

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.

Those who refused to respond to the new stimulus would perish. Adapt or perish.

Every junkie, he thought, is a recording.

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?