The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

by Philip K. Dick

“We all make mistakes,” the cab said piously. “But some of us,” Barney said, “make fatal ones.” First about our loved ones, our wife and children, and then about our employer, he said to himself. The cab hummed on. And then, he said to himself, we make one last one. About our whole life, summing it all up. Whether to take a job with Eldritch or go into the service. And whichever we choose we can know this: It was the wrong alternative.

I don’t know anything about philosophy; you explain it to me because all I know is religious faith and that doesn’t equip me to understand this.

This is the kind of speaking role women get in this book.

“Make love to me,” she said. “Not here. Too close to the entrance.” He was afraid. “Wherever you want. Take me there.” She put her arms around his neck. “Now,” she said. “Don’t wait.” He didn’t. Picking her up in his arms, he carried her away from the entrance. “Golly,” she said,

And this is the kind of writing you suffer through. How sexy!

She leaped, galvanized as if lost to the shock of a formal experiment. His pale, dignified, unclothed possession: become a tall and very thin greenless nervous system of a frog; probed to life by outside means.

Women can get a man to do anything, he realized. Mother, wife, even employee; they twist us like hot little bits of thermoplastic.

Those damn women, amirite?