VALIS Quotes

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“This is a mournful discovery.
1)Those who agree with you are insane
2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive. ”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy... fear makes you always, always hold something back.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound���s tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom. ”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“It has been said of dreams that they are a 'controlled psychosis,' or, put another way, a psychosis is a dream breaking through during waking hours.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Fish cannot carry guns.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Everybody knows that Aristotelian two-value logic is fucked.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Just tell me why; why the fucking why?" To which the universe would hollowly respond, "My ways cannot be known, oh man." Which is to say, "My ways do not make sense, nor do the ways of those who dwell in me.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't...Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“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.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“What he did not know then is that it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know. After all, if you are a Buddha you should be able to figure it out for yourself.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“You know what the doctor said to me to cheer me up?" Fat said. "There are worse diseases than cancer."
"Did he show you slides?"
We both laughed. When you are nearly crazy with grief, you laugh at what you can.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“We hypostatize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of the information; the message has changed. This is a language which we have lost the ability to read. We ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes in the content of the information. We ourselves are information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then projected outward once more, now in an altered form. We are not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are doing”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Exactly what the powers of hell feed on: the best instincts in man.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Men and the world are mutually toxic to each other.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form. The basic dynamism is as follows: a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpess. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain -- any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery. So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him: he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes, automatically, anhedonic. Anhedonia sets in stealthily. Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. In learning to defer he gratification he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has "control". Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and controlling person. Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. Of course, he is not conciousily aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence. But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others. Yet, he dervies no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essential negative.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane – not just insane but totally so – or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out and now knew that Fat was totally insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Sometimes I dream--"
"I'll put that on your gravestone.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“I can see Richard Wagner standing at the gates of heaven. "You have to let me in," he says. "I wrote Parsifal. It has to do with the Grail, Christ, suffering, pity and healing. Right?" And they answer, "Well, we read it and it makes no sense." SLAM.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one — in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable. Perhaps this is the bottom line to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur; your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality. And not only that — as if that weren't enough — but you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize. The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“He started keeping a journal — had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Matter is plastic in the face of Mind.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep Him.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Basically, Sherri's idea had to do with bringing Fat's mind down from the cosmic and the abstract to the particular. She had hatched out the practical notion that nothing is more real than a large World War Two Soviet tank.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS