Philip K Dick: A Voice of Existential Uncertainty: Doorways into Mystery

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Doorways into Mystery

1. For astronomers it might be black holes. For biologists it might be DNA. For physicists it might be subatomic particles. For Walt Whitman it was a blade of grass.

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Views from the Edge

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. 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. VALIS

Like a boat launched without paddles into a current, he was moving along without control, going wherever it took him, into the indiscriminate darkness beyond. Radio Free Albemuth

There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it's the nature of life to be hazardous--it's the stuff of living. Clans of the Alphane Moon

The bedrock basic stratum of reality is irreality; the universe is irrational because it is built not on mere shifting sand--but on that which is not. VALIS

Instead of psychosis, it was more on the order of a vision, a glimpse of absolute reality, with the facade stripped away. And it was so crushing, so radical an idea, that it could not be meshed with ordinary views. And the mental disturbance had come out of that. Martian Time-Slip

He saw a hole as large as a world; the earth disappeared and became black, empty, and nothing. Into the hole the men jumped one by one, until none of them were left. He was alone, with the silent world-hole. Martian Time-Slip

Nothing can stop me, Arnie said to himself. Gubble, gubble! Manfred cried as they sped along. Martian Time-Slip