The Simulacra QUOTES

1 " The inanity of her remark infuriated him. 'Good grief don't you understand Janet? At this point I'm thoroughly delusional. I'm as mentally ill as it's possible to be. It's incredible that I can communicate with you at all. It's a credit to my ego-strength that I'm not at this point totally autistic. "

― Philip K. Dick , The Simulacra

3 " The audience agreed, "Amen. "

― Philip K. Dick , The Simulacra

5 " And we're cheerful, too. You can count on that.' Obligingly she smiled in a neighbourly way at him. 'It will be a relief to leave Earth with its repressive legislation. We were listening OH the FM to the news about the McPhearson Act.'
'We consider it dreadful,' the adult male said.
'I have to agree with you,' Chic said. 'But what can one do?' He looked around for the mail; as always it was lost somewhere in the mass of clutter.
'One can emigrate,' the adult male simulacrum pointed out.
'Um,' Chic said absently. He had found an unexpected heap of recent-looking bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to sort through them. Had Maury seen these? Probably. Seen them and then pushed them away immediately, out of sight. Frauenzimmer Associates functioned better if it was not reminded of such facts of life. Like a regressed neurotic, it had to hide several aspects of reality from its percept system in order to function at all. This was hardly ideal, but what really was the alternative? To be realistic would be to give up, to die. Illusion, of an infantile nature was essential for the tiny firm's survival, or at least so it seemed to him and Maury. In any case both of them had adopted this attitude. Their simulacra -- the adult ones -- disapproved of this; their cold, logical appraisal of reality stood in sharp contrast, and Chic always felt a little naked, a little embarrassed, before the simulacra; he knew he should set a better example for them.
'If you bought a jalopy and emigrated to Mars,' the adult male said, 'We could be the famnexdo for you.'
'I wouldn't need any family next-door,' Chic said, 'if I emigrated to Mars. I'd go to get away from people.
'We'd make a very good family next-door to you,' the female said.
'Look,' Chic said, 'you don't have to lecture me about your virtues. I know more than you do yourselves.' And for good reason. Their presumption, their earnest sincerity, amused but also irked him. As next-door neighbours this group of sims would be something of a nuisance, he reflected. Still, that was what emigrants wanted, in fact needed, out in the sparsely-populated colonial regions. He could appreciate that; after all, it was Frauenzimmer Associates' business to understand.
A man, when he emigrated, could buy neighbours, buy the simulated presence of life, the sound and motion of human activity -- or at least its ​mechanical nearsubstitute to bolster his morale in the new environment of unfamiliar stimuli and perhaps, god forbid, no stimuli at all. And in addition to this primary psychological gain there was a practical secondary advantage as well. The famnexdo group of simulacra developed the parcel of land, tilled it and planted it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the human settler because the famnexdo group, legally speaking, occupied the peripheral portions of his land. The famnexdo were actually not next-door at all; they were part of their owner's entourage. Communication with them was in essence a circular dialogue with oneself; the famnexdo, it they were functioning properly, picked up the covert hopes and dreams of the settler and detailed them back in an articulated fashion. Therapeutically, this was helpful, although from a cultural standpoint it was a trifle sterile. "

― Philip K. Dick , The Simulacra

7 " The reporting machine purred intimately, 'Who do you feel is responsible for the passage of the McPhearson Act and der Alte's willingness to sign it into law?'
'You know who,' Dr Superb said, 'and so do I. Not the army and not Nicole and not even the NP. It's the great ethical pharmaceutical house, the cartel A.G. Chemie, in Berlin.' Everyone knew that; it was hardly news. The powerful German cartel had sold the world on the notion of drug-therapy for mental illness; there was a fortune to be made, there. And by corollary, psychoanalysts were quacks, on a par with orgone box and health food healers. It was not like the old days, the previous century, when psychoanalysts had had stature. Dr Superb sighed. "

― Philip K. Dick , The Simulacra

9 " Aw god,' Julie said. 'I wish I was dead.' She did not say it accusingly, as if it was his fault, or even as if she meant it passionately; it was as if she were resuming a conversation from the night before. 'What is the purpose of it all, Chic?' she said. 'I like Vince, but he's so goofy; he'll never grow up and really bear down at the business of living. He's always playing his games of being the embodiment of modern organized social life, the estab-man, pure and simple, whereas actually he's not. But he's young.' She sighed. It was a sigh that chilled Chic because it was a cold, cruel, utterly dismissing sigh. She was writing off another human being, severing herself from Vince with as little spilled emotion as if she had returned a book borrowed from the building's library. "

― Philip K. Dick , The Simulacra