Valis

No man is infinitely strong; for every creature that runs, flies, hops or crawls there is a terminal nemesis which he will not circumvent, which will finally do him in.

Helping people was one of the two basic things Fat had been told to give up; helping people and taking dope. He had stopped taking dope, but all his energy and enthusiasm were now totally channelled into saving people. Better he had kept on with the dope.

To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement ... Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus ... thereby it becomes its enemies.

Mental illness is not funny.

"You of all people," the void communicated. "Out of everyone, it is you I love the most."

The Empire Never Ended

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense.

The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than the 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.

Crazy people do not apply the principle of scientific parsimony... they shoot for the baroque.

"matter is plastic in the face of mind."

Certainly it constitutes bad news if the people who agree with you are buggier than batshit.

Fish cannot carry guns.

Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on.

God is either powerless, stupid or he doesn't give a shit.

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away.

A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more.

For each person there is a sentence — a series of words — which has the power to destroy him ... another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you're lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.

We hypostasize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of the information; the message has changed. This is a language which we have lost the ability to read. We ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes in the content of the information. We ourselves are information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then projected outwards once more, now in an altered form. We are not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are doing.