A Scanner Darkly Quotes: The Book
“Everything in life is just for a while.”
Philip K. Dick
“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me – into us – clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”
Philip K. Dick
“Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”
Philip K. Dick
“But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand.”
Philip K. Dick
“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person’s eyes maybe died back in childhood.”
Philip K. Dick
“If I’d known it was harmless, I’d have killed it myself!”
Philip K. Dick
“Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”
Philip K. Dick
“They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed–run over, maimed, destroyed–but they continued to play anyhow.”
Philip K. Dick
“The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life…My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.”
Philip K. Dick
“How’d you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There’d be nothing to fear.”
Philip K. Dick
“If the last to know he’s an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected.”
Philip K. Dick
“The most dangerous kind of person… is one who is afraid of his own shadow.”
Philip K. Dick
“It’s easy to win. Anybody can win.”
Philip K. Dick
“When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?”
Philip K. Dick
“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular lifestyle the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.”
Philip K. Dick
“I have seen myself backward.”
Philip K. Dick
“But at least he can still see the lights below us. Although maybe for him it doesn’t matter.”
Philip K. Dick
“Don’t never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life.”Philip K. Dick“Don’t never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life.”
Philip K. Dick
“Life is only heavy and none else; there is only the one trip, all heavy. Heavy that leads to the grave. For everyone and everything.”
Philip K. Dick
“In this particular lifestyle the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.”
Philip K. Dick
“How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Just – change.
Philip K. Dick
With nothing causing it.”
Philip K. Dick
“Every junkie, he thought, is a recording.”
Philip K. Dick
“Another fantasy film rolled suddenly into his head, without his consent:”
Philip K. Dick
“That’s what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever’s in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it…”
Philip K. Dick
“It’s amazing the limitation of the human anatomy, the fact that food and air must share a common passage.”
Philip K. Dick
“That man indeed lives in a zone where no multiplicity can distress him and which is nevertheless the most active workshop of universal fulfillment.”
Philip K. Dick
“I resemble that worm which crawls through dust, lives in the dust, eats dus. Until a passerby’s foot crushes it.”
Philip K. Dick
A Scanner Darkly Quotes: The Movie
“What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can’t any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone’s sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I’m cursed and cursed again.”
Fred
“The pain, so unexpected and undeserved had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change, nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.”
Bob Arctor
“I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field.”
Fred
“D. Substance D. ‘D’ is dumbness, and despair, desertion-desertion of you from your friends, your friends from you, everyone from everyone. Isolation and loneliness. And hating and suspecting each other. ‘D’ is finally death. Slow death from the head down. Well, that’s it.”
Fred
“Total total total totally total total total providence.”
Barris
“I believe God’s M.O. is to transmute evil into good and if He’s active here, he’s doing that now. Although our eyes can’t perceive it. The whole process is hidden beneath the surface of our reality. It will only be revealed later. And even then, the people of the future, our children’s children, will never truly know this awful time that we have gone through and the losses we took. Maybe some footnote in a minor history book, a brief mention with no list of the fallen.”
Mike
“What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window like that infamous Beatles song?”
Luckman
“There’s only one thing we can do to thwart the plot of these albino shape-shifting lizard BITCHES!”
Barris
“That fucking Barris, you know how he works. He doesn’t kill anybody, but he hangs around until the situation arises where they die. Then he just sits there, he sort of sets them up in the first place while he stays out of it.”
Bob Arctor
Have any other favorite A Scanner Darkly quotes you’d add? Let me know in the comments! Do you prefer the book or the movie?
Note: A Scanner Darkly is part of our list of “Movies That Make You Question Reality.”
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