Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle (1962)

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What does it mean, insane? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it? It is something they do, something they are. It is their unconsciousness... Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans... Their view; it is cosmic... They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles of space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again.

Philip K. Dick
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.

Philip K. Dick
Insanity is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.

Philip K. Dick
Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive. Even though I can't prove that, even though it isn't logical — I believe it.

Philip K. Dick
That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.

Philip K. Dick
This is an artifact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained.

Philip K. Dick
[Hawthorne Abendsen] told us about our own world. This, what's around us now. He wants us to see it for what it is. And I do, and more so each moment.

Philip K. Dick
[Fiction] Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface.

Philip K. Dick
Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small... and you will escape the jealousy of the great.

Philip K. Dick
Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane.

Philip K. Dick
Dilemma of a civilized man; body mobilized but danger obscure.

Philip K. Dick
We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. Falling into an interminable ennui.

Philip K. Dick
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.

Philip K. Dick
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.

Philip K. Dick
It's the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory, every particle being connected with every other; you can't fart without changing the balance in the universe. It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh. I open a book and get a report on future events that even God would like to file and forget. And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.

Philip K. Dick
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.

Philip K. Dick
I feel the hot winds of karma driving me. Nevertheless I remain here. My training was correct: I must not shrink from the clear white light, for if I do, I will once more re-enter the cycle of birth and death, never knowing freedom, never obtaining release. The veil of maya will fall once more.

Philip K. Dick
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.

Philip K. Dick
To save one life, Mr. Tagomi had to take two. The logical, balanced mind cannot make sense of that. A kindly man like Mr. Tagomi could be driven insane by the implications of such reality.

Philip K. Dick
Life is short. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand. But no longer.

Philip K. Dick
When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.... I must be scientific.

Philip K. Dick
This hypnagogic condition. Attention-faculty diminished so that twilight state obtains; world seen merely in symbolic, archetypal aspect, totally confused with unconscious material.

Philip K. Dick
Are we to assist it in gaining power in order to save our lives? Is that the paradox of our earthly situation?

Philip K. Dick
Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren't watching what they do then what they do isn't real.

Philip K. Dick