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.
Interpretation
The quote highlights finding beauty and meaning in unexpected places, showcasing the artistry in everyday life.
In this quote, Philip K. Dick reflects on an experience where he perceives beauty in seemingly insignificant elements of life, such as trash and debris in alleys. His sharpened vision allows him to see a hidden visual language within the chaos, suggesting that beauty can be found in the overlooked and mundane aspects of existence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about finding creativity in urban settings during an art seminar.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
"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."
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
Artists know that diligence counts as much, if not more, as inspiration; in art, as in politics, patience counts as much as revolution.
The ultimate goal of the architect...is to create a paradise. Every house, every product of architecture... should be a fruit of our endeavour to build an earthly paradise for people.
What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.
Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality.
The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.
When I write something, I can't remember in the end if this is a memory or if it's not - I'm talking about fiction. So for me, it's the same thing.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.