The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

It will end, Childan thought. Someday. The very idea of place. Not governed and governing, but people.

“Afraid I do not care for modern art,” Mr. Baynes said. “I like the old prewar cubists and abstractionists. I like a picture to mean something, not merely to represent the ideal.” He turned away. “But that’s the task of art,” Lotze said. “To advance the spirituality of man, over the sensual. Your abstract art represented a period of spiritual decadence, of spiritual chaos, due to the disintegration of society, the old plutocracy. The Jewish and capitalist millionaires, the international set that supported the decadent art. Those times are over; art has to go on—it can’t stay still.”

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

Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small . . . and you will escape the jealousy of the great.

It’s the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory, every particle being connected with every other; you can’t fart without changing the balance in the universe.

The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television?

“Can’t I watch?” she asked, wondering why not. All night with him, and then this modesty. “Are we bugs?” she said. “We can’t stand the sight of each other in the daylight—we have to squeeze into the walls?”

The cycle of manic enthusiasm, then fear, then Partei solutions of a desperate type—well, the point he got across was that all this tends to bring the most irresponsible and reckless aspirants to the top.”

“Chicken shit,” Mr. Tagomi said. “I say that to that.”