Quotes from Selected Letters, 1972 - 1973 ( 1993 )

Everybody here has a sense of humour, but it rapidly goes away when I come around.

There are no psychiatrists here, so I can't go see anybody; I just bop around getting weirder all the time.

Gradually everybody is beginning to realise that despite my great fame and my great books I am a distinct liability to know or have anything at all to do with.

Be prepared. Weird sexy Phil may RETURN!

"You feel too much self-pity," Susie Walsh said to me the other day, in passing, conversationally, noting that I was withering up and dying from missing Katherine. "No," I said, "I feel too much self-tragedy." If people who know you deeply and care about you are going to snark at you, at least they should get it right.

It's amazing, the cunning I show in snuffing myself. If I put half the time, half the work, half the talent into writing, I'd be rich, handsome and famous. And turn out something worthwhile.

You know how I am. No one can ever tell what I'm up to.

I don't suffer because I am ceasing to care. It's easier on me, but - is this really the solution?

Actually, a person's authentic nature is a series of shifting, variegated planes that establish themselves as he relates to different people; it is created by and appears within the framework of his interpersonal relationships.

That variety of loss would be mere absolute misery for me, without any overtones of horror. But, from my standpoint, that would be enough. But that's life. Things like that happen. Especially if the girl involved is really extraordinarily pretty. That's my tragedy. My problem.

The earth manufactures pretty chicks, beautiful chicks, one after the other; it always has and it always will. They appear, are admired; they glimmer and depart and usually are forgotten. Each is systematically replaced.

Linda and I went over to the computer building and she showed me how Hal the computer works. It got even more weird after that.

Keep your ass in gear and don't get discouraged.

During my life I have experienced prolonged misery accompanied by a great deal of emotion, plus shorter intervals of pleasure. In addition I've occasionally seen the universe in a sort of rational way, which is I guess what most people try to do and often tell me I ought to do. . .

Life without good people is not life at all.

Singly and collectively we have phased in and out of sanity, and have discovered that anything is possible.

I went downstairs just now to put clothes in the dryer and noticed this sign on it: "Cycle is not complete until the light goes out." This is true for all of us.

All kidding aside, it was a terrific article, and the photo of me and Wanda Kendall sure acme out foxy. We called her to tell her about it, and imagine our surprise when she at once said, "Why don't you come by with it? I'll fix dinner for you." I agreed to do so at once, and went right out to buy a car.

A horror lies over the landscape, but maybe it's the landscape within me, my own mind. . .

It's a cardboard universe. . .and if you lean to hard against it you fall through, but god knows into what.

There's nothing to pray to, just a plastic void filled with trash blowing about.

"My life would make a good book," I've been saying to myself for years, and finally I let myself tell it and shit, maybe it would.

. . .the will to write is even greater than anyone supposed, outclassed in intensity only by the will to survive as such, in any form.

. . .our plural reality system involves at least four sets of realities taking place simultaniously, and I know I spelled that wrong, which shows I'm tired and should knock off.

"Certainly PALMER ELDRITCH must be called one of the most successfully prophetic sf novels ever published; the only problem for you is that it came true so fast for so many people.

There is indeed something dreadful in the way that time washes away relationships, as well as everything else. But relationships are the most precious things we have, I believe.

It is as if I must breathe life into the universe every day; if I don't struggle it will slow down and unwind, to a stop. . .decay away, as in UBIK. As if myself am the spraycan. But I am running out of pressure; I can't keep squirting reality around me into activity forever. Can't somebody else help?

I dreamed the other night that I was up on a stage making a speech of acceptance for an award, but I was not too clear in my mind what the award was for. Harlan Ellison was the only person in the audience and he was laughing.

Linda just about wiped me out; I'm just now recovering from her. To give you a brief insight into her schizy mind, I've got two items written by her tacked up on the wall before me; they read: LOVE IS THE ONLY FLOWER THAT GROWS AND BLOSSOMS WITHOUT THE AID OF SEASONS and PKD - MIND YOUR OWN GODDAM BUSINESS AND KEEP YOUR CHEAP THREATS TO YOURSELF.

There is nothing more reassuring to someone who's gone through an acute identity crisis than clean plastic aprtments, streets, restaurants and furniture.

Nothing gets old or worn or dirty here because if it does the police come in and kill it.

The weather here in Fullerton . . .is compounded of mixed misery with a high probability of further pain. However, it is expected to give way to dim prospects later on, with uncertain outcome. Residents are advised to take shelter until the turn of the century, by which time - it is hoped - Fullerton will have ceased to exist as we know it, weather included.

At the world science fiction convention in September in Los Angeles I was on a panel and spoke about the danger of crabgrass taking over the universe. Everybody got up and left.

I've settled down now and become very straight and respectable. You have to, in Orange County. Otherwise the cops look at you funny.

I do exactly what they tell me to do now. . .at least while they're watching. They seem to be watching all the time. But they'll slip up eventually. They always do. It's human nature. Of course, I tend to slip up, too. When I get caught I always say, "Walt Disney made me do it."

Once you give up, it's all over.

I hope you've got good friends. I hope that other people have you for their friend, too. That's where it's at.

Be good, but not too good; there's a proper limit to everything.

I hate to sound my own horn, but the nitty-gritty is this: in the U.S. I am considered a s-f writer; in foreign countries I am considered a serious black-humour writer of great depth who happened to choose s-f as a vehicle to reach people by.

The middle initial in my name stands for Kindred, my mother's maiden name. Kafka would be more apt, perhaps; maybe not; maybe Kindred is right on. Is it?

. . .I like to get a lot of mail (I forget why).

Since I've finished my novel I could now do comic book stuff.

People who write their grudges into their books. . .make me nervous.

Can I be of use in your war against illegal drugs? I am a well-known science fiction novelist.

I have come to believe that drug-abuse is the greatest problem I know of. . .

I have I suppose a strange sense of humour, but I enjoyed writing my novels; I have deeply loved my characters and fought for them as they faced all the weird and heavy stuff that perpetually comes down on their heads, as it does on ours.

|Both the New Left, the hippie movement and the street drug subculture have more sense of the worth of art - and do more to produce it - than the guy watering his lawn in front of his tract house; what he's worrying about is somebody scratching the paint job on his new Buick. That's what he defends and treasures.

It is more the profit motive that creates new addicts - the profit-motive on the part of the pusher - than any psychological aspect of the user's head, or any sociological factors.

"Mr. Dick, what is the meaning of your latest novel, WE CAN BUILD YOU?" PKD: "Very little." B.B.C.: "What, sir, in your mind is the meaning of science fiction in general?" PKD: "Very little." B.B.C.: "Sir, who do you consider the most important science fiction writers presently at work?" PKD: "Can I go now?"

You'd be surprised (I was) as to what my themes throughout all my writing are. I had thought they were: sex, money and power, but evidently they are: coffee, milk and mayonnaise.

I really don't or can't claim to be a professional. I've just sold some stories and novels, the way other people sell dried fruit or watermelons at the side of the road.

Ultimately I found very little that was amusing in the dope world and much that was heartbreaking.

I consider time-travel a distinct downer. As bad as dope.

It's amazing what dog tranks do to your typing.

Generally, I do not read science fiction stories, as they deal with rocket ships and blast pistols and other escape trash. . .

Goddam the pusherman, I say. It cost me my marriage and my little girl, and it cost Nancy her sanity.

. . .although seemingly it is tranquil in this one town, Fullerton, the great overall political climate of the U.S. - as you can discern from the Watergate affair - is that of a growingly police state, a fascist state in truth.

I swear to God, my friend, the fascists almost took over, almost seized absolute power in the U.S., in a vast secret coup. They almost succeeded. How close they came. . .but they are revealed now, although probably not to their rotten depths. But they damn near had it in their grip. I swear. They will try again, I know it.

Some money came in, so we got a used colour TV and very fine stereo phones for the stereo. Now we have what the media calls a "home boredom centre" right in our living room. . .

I wonder if the terror, the invisible police strikes and assaults on us, on the 'radical' anti-war left, will begin someday or have even ended?

I still listen for the jackboots, and maybe always will.

I sort of spaced out, realising the hopeless stupidity of TV and of owning a TV. But if you don't own a TV, people come over breathlessly and say, "Hey, did you see the planet Jupiter explode into a million pieces last night." And then they looki at you like the dummy you are.

I myself feel that when you discover you have a government committing an almost endless list of scrimes, and which when caught will not own up and resign, then whatever crime you commit against this government to overthrow it is in only a legal sense a crime, not a moral.

We must face the fact that we have a criminal mob running this country, doing an incredible number of illegal things all the way up to murder, and this being so, we owe them nothing, nothing at all, in the way of complying with their laws.

"Phil Dick's writing is more important than Hemingway's or Faulkner's. It has changed 20th century culture." Fine, but did we make a dime off this?

I admit I can't spell, but I do good interviews.

I do not see why you can't kiss your therapist if you find her warm and kind and pretty. . .

I don't think they want me to be happy. Just a dull normal.

Thanos can take a long and stealthy path, such as dropping in your ear the desire to watch TV every night and go no where and visit no one. I am dead serious. To me these TV watchers are succumbing to Thanos.

I think losers talk very interestingly; that's about all they have to do.

It takes a certain ability to lose.

There is no group so feared, so mistrusted and hated in the U.S. than the kids - "The long-haired hippie freaks", as they are called. And they are so feared because they are apolitical. They want nothing to do with politics.

Each night we had Attack Therapy, which is the most powerful psychotherapy in existence and either cures you or kills you; the object of it is to tear down the old personality and build up a new one. It had no effect on me, except to wear me out and make me glad when bedtime came.

I have led an unusual and exciting life - which is fine, if I can just manage to keep leading it.

I guess to love a woman is now an insult to her - it makes her into a sex object - and if you don't, well, then there is little joy in the world, just a lot of angry ladies catching you up at every slip of the tongue / pen.

A cult is growing up around my novels; it's amazing. I get letters from all over the world. They seem to think I know something. I don't; I just write down what comes into my head.

Maybe I can play a walk-on bit type part in the movie (Blade Runner), a drunk in a bar or something like that.

"Second Variety". . .is an old, old story of mine and in my opinion little chance exists that anyone else is going to want to do a screenplay on it.

I didn't eat a lot at Thanksgiving; I'm on a diet. I couldn't even finish my boiled mouse.

I always seem to have trouble making myself clear with the written word. Bad genes, maybe.

I guess. . .we experience everything graphically, like movies.