The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

We have no value, she said to herself. We can live out our tiny lives. If we want to. If it matters to us.

Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I

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.

“You’re killing yourself,” she said, “with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.”

We’re blind moles. Creeping through the soil, feeling with our snoots. We know nothing. I perceived this . . . now I don’t know where to go.

The universe will never be extinguished because just when the darkness seems to have smothered all, to be truly transcendent, the new seeds of light are reborn in the very depths.

We really do see astigmatically, in fundamental sense: our space and our time creations of our own psyche, and when these momentarily falter—like acute disturbance of middle ear.