Famous quotes by Philip K. Dick
This page has been quoted as Best of the Net by Village Voice (February 25th, 1997)
Send us your favourite phildickian quote to be included in this page.
Send us your favourite phildickian quote to be included in this page.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away."
He's supposed to have said that in response to the question "What is reality?" asked by a high school student. (The Best of PKD, Del Rey Books).
Another source mentions it's also quoted from the novel "Valis".
"The idea had occured to me that maybe what we see is not real. That it is somehow - I don't know what the alternative for 'real' is... There's a state of things being semi-real."
"Giving me a new idea is like handing a cretin a loaded gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang, bang."
"I told all this to the checkers at Trader Joe's... and they took away my check cashing card."
"If I had known it was harmless I would have killed it myself."
"It's a cardboard universe... and if you lean too hard against it, you fall through."
"A citizen runs to the fire department yelling that he's spotted a roaring blaze from his car.
- "Where is it", the fire department asks, pen ready.
- It rises like some brooding , glaring trail of cosmic fury from...
- WHERE? WHERE?
- Oh. Well, it blazes up from a crimson-sheathed visage brooding darkly above the haunted towers of impotent indignity which, like melons hovering unhappily over lifetimes of empty meaning which...
- THE ADDRESS!
- Oh. Oh, I didn't notice. But look for a broodung, glaring trail of cosmic fury rising from a crimson-sheathed visage.
They lead him back to his car, and send him on."
The previous quote, suggested by Marc L., is taken from a letter by Phil Dick to Sandra Miesel, dated 4/3/73.
"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."
Probably taken from "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon".
"Honoring one of the rules which all of them had made up, the bunch of them scattered here and there across the map of earth, in little offices in puny positions, with nothing to do... Nothing but the harsh vacuity of their collective society, which each in his (or her) own way objected to, which all of them, in collaboration, circumvented by means of The Game."
Reported by Richard C., taken from "The Galactic Pot-Healer".
"This was what happened to all the things that came out of the wet earth, out of the filthy slime and mold. All things that lived, big and little. They appeared, struggling out of the sticky wetness. And then, after a time, they died."
Reported by Richard C., taken from "Gather Yourself Together".
"The basis of life is not greed to exist, not desire of any kind but fear, the fear which I saw here. And not even fear; much worse. Absolute dread. Paralyzing dread so great as to produce empathy."
Reported by Richard C., taken from "We Can Build You".
"The average American suffers from two delusions, one is that God is dead and the other is that there is a difference between brands of cigarettes."
Reported by Patrick C., taken from a letter to Avram Davidson.
"Anything you think may be held against you."
Reported by Jamie R., taken from "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale".
"All talk of reality is meaningless."
Probably mentioned in "Only Apparently Real", reported by Michael W.