I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complexity of self-perception and sacrifice, suggesting that one's perceived flaws can also be seen as advantages.
In this quote, Philip K. Dick explores the duality of the human experience through the metaphor of a fish whose fat is consumed. It highlights how from one perspective, being seen as desirable or valuable can lead to exploitation, yet from another perspective, this same quality can be viewed as a source of contentment or worth. It invites the reader to consider how our traits and vulnerabilities can be interpreted in contrasting ways based on individual experiences and societal perspectives.
In practice
During a motivational talk about self-acceptance, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of embracing one's flaws.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android."
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.
Your skin is prickly from fatigue and pain and there is a hissing in your ears. Time passes and the pills are taking hold like a glowing white planet coming into view. A reverse eclipse. And you watch with your eyes closed. The white planet is half exposed, it grips your heart in its light and seems to be pulling you forward and now you feel that you are falling. You are awake but dreaming. "The earth is not beautiful but the universe is," you say.
When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too.
Zeus most glorious and most great, Thundercloud, throned in the heavens! Let not the sun go down and the darkness come, until I cast down headlong the citadel of Priam in flames, and burn his gates with blazing fire, and tear to rags the shirt upon Hectors breast! May many of his men fall about him prone in the dust and bite the earth!
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