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Philip K. Dick

Writer
Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go.

But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him.

And you can accept that. What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him -- a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A cut that never heals.

And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you.
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Pious people spoke to God, and crazy people imagined that God spoke back.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.
From The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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?
From The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
To live is to be haunted.
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.
From A Scanner Darkly
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
This is a mournful discovery.
1)Those who agree with you are insane
2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Knocking TV. It's a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, 'What's happened to this country? Where's the level of education gone? The morality?
From Time Out of Joint
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic co-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go.

But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him.

And you can accept that. What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him -- a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A cut that never heals.

And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you.
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Pious people spoke to God, and crazy people imagined that God spoke back.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.
From The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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?
From The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
To live is to be haunted.
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.
From A Scanner Darkly
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
This is a mournful discovery.
1)Those who agree with you are insane
2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Knocking TV. It's a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, 'What's happened to this country? Where's the level of education gone? The morality?
From Time Out of Joint
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic co-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go.

But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him.

And you can accept that. What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him -- a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A cut that never heals.

And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you.
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Pious people spoke to God, and crazy people imagined that God spoke back.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.
From The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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?
From The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
To live is to be haunted.
From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.
From A Scanner Darkly
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
This is a mournful discovery.
1)Those who agree with you are insane
2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Knocking TV. It's a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, 'What's happened to this country? Where's the level of education gone? The morality?
From Time Out of Joint
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic co-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.
From VALIS
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.
From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life