She makes life over, he realized. She controls life, whereas I just sit on my can and let it happen to me.
Interpretation
The speaker acknowledges that one person actively shapes their life while he passively experiences it.
In this quote, Philip K. Dick reflects on the contrast between two approaches to life: active participation versus passive observation. The realization that someone else 'makes life over' suggests that they have agency and control over their circumstances, while the speaker recognizes his own inaction, leading to a life that simply unfolds rather than being crafted.
In practice
During a motivational speech about taking charge of one's life, this quote highlights the importance of personal agency.
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.
There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.
she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity; and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquillity to her heart.
The truth is, I'm just a rough old New Zealander who has enjoyed many challenges in his life.
I don't think I was particularly in need of superheroes. I never had any fascination with Superman or Spider-Man or a Batman kind of character. If it happened at all, it was imagined characters that I had invented. My dad was a role model for me. He was a fascinating man. There was intrigue and entertainment growing up with him. He gave me an edict that I still pursue: βLife should never be boring."
I see it every day: People trying to create a home that somebody else tells them they should have. I don't care if it's a magazine or a bossy friend - when somebody says, 'This is what's elegant, this is what's trendy,' if it doesn't represent you, you're not going to be happy.
Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.