- Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
- The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
- [September 25, 1980, from a conversation with Paul M. Sammon (Paul Sammon)]: You would have to kill me and prop me up in the seat of my car with a smile painted on my face to get me to go near Hollywood.
- I'm an obsessive writer and if I don't get writer's block I'd overload, short circuit and blow my brain out right away.
- Sometimes to go insane is an appropriate response to the World.
- If you want to get well, you're going to have to stop trying to help people.
- The most dangerous kind of person... is one who is afraid of his own shadow.
- What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.
- Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.
- This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power
- Exactly what the powers of hell feed on: the best instincts in man.
- When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.... I must be scientific.
- [Valis] Mental Illness is not funny.
- For every person a sentence, a series of words, exists that can destroy them. There also exists a series of words that can heal them. You may not get the second, but you can be sure of getting the first.
- There should be a Clause that if you find God you get to keep Him.
- He was becoming an Anachronism, and The Universe has a habit of deleting Anachronisms.
- [Valis] "'Fappers', it was on the banners: 'Friend of the American People'"
- The authorities had become as psychotic as they people they hunted. The authorities wanted to lock up anyone who wasn't a clone of the establishment. The authorities were full of hate.
- There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.
- It horrified him, this thought: the ancient gigantic cannibal near-man flourishing now, ruling the world once more. We spent a million years escaping him, Frink thought, and now he's back. And not merely as the adversary . . . but as the master.
- You know the old brownshirt term for people who spin philosophy? Eierkopf. Egghead. Because the big double-domed empty heads break so easily . . . in the street brawls
- The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television? Anyhow, they killed most of the really great comedians.
- And yet, even if one person finds his way ... that means there is a Way. Even if I personally fail to reach it.
- Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive
- They're not idealists like Joe and me; they're cynics with utter faith. It's a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy-that
- Amazing, the power of fiction, even cheap popular fiction, to evoke. No wonder it's banned within Reich territory
- They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. it is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate-confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.
What they do not comprehend is man's helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn't it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small...and you will escape the jealousy of the great. - [Valis] Too much medication, I thought, remembering Paracelsus, is poison. This man has been healed to death!
- Don't make fun of him," I said. "This is important to him.
- Fat, according to Kevin, was "Horny".
- There is an intimate relationship between what is wise and what exists...
- You always need the Saviour now. Later is always too late.
- [Martian Time Slip] He became Autistic, what choice did he have?
- It was a time of our lives we preferred to forget about. Too many bad memories, too many dreams gone down the tubes.
- I'd write a book about it if I thought anyone would believe people could be as irrational as we are." "They would now, after those 900 people at Jonestown...
- Evil serves Good, despite its cunning.
- When you're Mentally Ill, you learn to keep quiet...
- There's a line in the I-Ching: "Always sick but never dies." That describes my Friend.
- It is a characteristic of the Mentally ill to despise those who try to help them and love those who connive against them.
- The nurses are dumb, they have enough trouble working out which patient is which and finding their little paper cups. This is because ward populations are constantly changing. New people arrive and old people get discharged.
- Heraclitus: Time is a Child at Play. This is a terrible thought, a Child playing with all Life in the Universe.
- That's the Existentialist position: "We are what we do", not "We are what we think."
- As with Anaxamander, Time is a name for God...
- [Valis] There is no Door to God through Dope. That is a Lie spread by the unscrupulous.
- [Valis] It is patently obvious that the Nurses are dumb.
- When someone else espouses the same thing you believe, you can identify it as gibberish.
- Kevin had no viable alternative to Mental Illness; his Cynical grin was the grin of Death.
- We enjoyed baiting Fat into Theological Disputation, because he always got angry.
- The root of the word idiot is the word private...
- The Universe and the Mind behind it are insane. Therefore to be in touch with Reality is to be in touch with the insane.
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