Palmer Eldritch Quotes

It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.

But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That's closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.

Dio promette la vita eterna” disse Eldritch. “Io posso fare di meglio; posso metterla in commercio.

You learn to get by from day to day," Sam Regan said sympathetically to him. "You never think in longer terms. Just until dinner or until time for bed; very finite intervals and tasks and pleasures. Escapes.

I mean, after all, you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?

Tomorrow morning, he decided, I'll begin clearing away the sand of fifty thousand centuries for my first vegetable garden. That's the initial step.

But—let me tell you my cat joke. It's very short and simple. A hostess is giving a dinner party and she's got a lovely five-pound T-bone steak sitting on the sideboard in the kitchen waiting to be cooked while she chats with the guests in the living room—has a few drinks and whatnot. But then she excuses herself to go into the kitchen to cook the steak—and it's gone. And there's the family cat, in the corner, sedately washing it's face." "The cat got the steak," Barney said. "Did it? The guests are called in; they argue about it. The steak is gone, all five pounds of it; there sits the cat, looking well-fed and cheerful. "Weigh the cat," someone says. They've had a few drinks; it looks like a good idea. So they go into the bathroom and weigh the cat on the scales. It reads exactly five pounds. They all perceive this reading and a guest says, "okay, that's it. There's the steak." They're satisfied that they know what happened, now; they've got empirical proof. Then a qualm comes to one of them and he says, puzzled, "But where's the cat?

No one, it appeared to Barney, had anything to do now; the weight of empty time hung over them all.

The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing.

She was a redhead and he liked redheads; they were either outrageously ugly or almost supernaturally attractive.

Oh no," she said, still smiling; her eyes poured over with light, that of compassion. She understood how he felt, that this was not an impulse only. But the answer was still no, and, he knew, it would always

I did not find God in the Prox system. But I found something better. God promises eternal life. I can do better; I can deliver it.

Palmer Eldritch had gone to Prox a man and returned a god.

Whether I like it or not I've been born again.

While translated one could commit incest, murder, anything, and it remained from a juridical standpoint a mere fantasy, an impotent wish only.

It meant that you were seeing into absolute reality. The essence beyond the mere appearance." In your terminology, he thought, what you saw is called - stigmata.

The man bobbed toylike in front of him, meanwhile digging into his pocket as if scratching at a familiar micro-organism that possessed parasitic proclivities that had survived the test of time.

Oh no," she said, still smiling; her eyes poured over with light, that of compassion. She understood how he felt, that this was not an impulse only. But the answer was still no, and, he knew, it would always be;

I used to think,” Miss Jurgens said, “that when the ships first left our system for another star—remember that?—we’d hear that—” She hesitated. “It’s so silly, but I was only a kid then, when Arnoldson made his first trip to Prox and back; I was a kid when he got back, I mean. I actually thought maybe by going that far he’d—” She ducked her head, not meeting Leo Bulero’s gaze. “He’d find God.” Leo thought, I thought so, too. And I was an adult, then. In my mid-thirties. As I’ve mentioned to Barney on numerous occasions. And, he thought, I still believe that, even now. About the ten-year flight of Palmer Eldritch.

Are―you dying?" she asked. "Just can't breathe. This air." "Poor, poor―good lord. I've forgotten your name." "Hell of a thing." "Barney!" He clutched her. "No! Don't stop!" She arched her back. Her teeth chattered. "I wasn't going to," he said. "Oooaugh!" He laughed. "Don't please laugh at me." "Not meant unkindly." A long silence, then. Then, "Oof.

And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile. Barefoot, he padded into the living room, and seated himself by the suitcase; he opened it, clicked switches, and turned on Dr. Smile. Meters began to register and the mechanism hummed. "Where am I?" Barney asked it. "And how far am I from New York?" That was the main point...

Ist die traurigste Realität nicht immer noch besser als die Illusion?

Eldritch showed up from another space but I came from another time.

I have therefore focused, in the main narrative, on only the best of the stories and on those eleven novels-Eye in the Sky (1957), Time Out of Joint (1959), Confessions of a Crap Artist (w. 1959, p. 1975), The Man in the High Castle (1962), Martian Time-Slip (1964), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Ubik (1969), Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), A Scanner Darkly (1977), Valis (1981), and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)-that

Already Sam Regan could feel the power of the drug wearing off; he felt weak and afraid and bitterly sickened at the realization. So goddamn soon, he said to himself. All over; back to the hovel, to the pit in which we twist and cringe like worms in a paper bag, huddled away from the daylight.

It meant that you were seeing into absolute reality. The essence beyond the mere appearance. In your terminology, he thought, what you saw is called - stigmata.

It meant that you were seeing into absolute reality. The essence beyond the mere appearance.” In your terminology, he thought, what you saw is called—stigmata.

Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion? Or is it illusion,

maybe that’s the source of its knowledge: not experience but unending solitary brooding.

He himself was a believer; he affirmed the miracle of translation—the near-sacred moment in which the miniature artifacts of the layout no longer merely represented Earth but became Earth. And he and the others, joined together in the fusion of doll-inhabitation by means of the Can-D, were transported outside of time and local space. Many of the colonists were as yet unbelievers; to them the layouts were merely symbols of a world which none of them could any longer experience. But, one by one, the unbelievers came around.

I hate beets. So please don’t plant any, even mutant ones that are green, tall, and skinny and taste like last year’s plastic doorknob.

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