152 quotes
The book business is hidebound.
Lies, Inc (1984)
The merest presence of life, even the smallest possible quantity of volition, desire and intent was enough to reverse the process by which the eternal landscape of hell made itself known.
Lies, Inc (1984)
He was by himself always. Remote, detached, aloof. Seeing past everyone and everything — that is, until all at once something clicked and he momentarily rephased, reentered their world briefly.
The Golden Man (1954)
I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field, in stubbled color.
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Giving me a new idea is like handing a cretin a loaded gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang, bang.
Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren't watching what they do then what they do isn't real.
The Man in the High Castle (1962)
It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense.
VALIS (1981)
That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.
The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Don't you feel ashamed when you let a machine tell you what to do?
Vulcan's Hammer (1956)
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
VALIS (1981)
Cris didn't want to play. He never played.
The Golden Man (1954)
Probably she should not have gotten away with it for as long as she had...but sometime, he had often thought, the retribution will come: reality denied comes back to haunt.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974)
I, for one, bet on science as helping us. I have yet to see how it fundamentally endangers us, even with the H-bomb lurking about. Science has given us more lives than it has taken; we must remember that.
Self Portrait (1968)
For Mercer everything is easy, he thought, because Mercer accepts everything. Nothing is alien to him. But what I've done, he thought; that's become alien to me. In fact everything has become unnatural; I've become an unnatural self.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
We ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes in the content of the information.
VALIS (1981)
We are not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are doing.
VALIS (1981)
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.
The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing.
Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)
Science Fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.
How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)
It's a downer to tell anything to a kid. I once had a kid ask me, “What was it like to see the first automobile?” Shit, man, I was born in 1962.
A Scanner Darkly (1977)