People suffering nervous breakdowns often do a lot of research, to find explanations for what they are undergoing. the research, of course fails.
This is a cardboard universe, and if you lean too long or too heavily against it, you fall through.
Does she make the heavens fall?” “Yes, she pulls down everything.” Molinari nodded. “It’s a psionic talent she has... it’s called being a woman.
There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn’t even terrible; it’s possibly funny, if even that. It’s embarrassing. That’s all. A little embarrassing to realize that I no longer control my life, that the major decisions have already been made, long before I was conscious that any change was occurring.
I remember something the Buddha said after he witnessed a supposed saint walk on water: ‘For a penny,’ the Buddha said, ‘I can board a ferry and do that.’ It was more practical, even for the Buddha, to cross the water normally. The normal and the supranormal were not antagonistic realms, after all.
She sighed. “Oh, God, to be in the flyship cruising through the void. That’s what I long for: an infinite void. With no human voices, no human smells, no human jaws masticating plastic chewing gum in nine iridescent colors.
But change’s always harsh on the loser. Nothing new.
There’s nothing worse than a perceptive universe if there’s something weird about you.
Wake up to a hearty, lip-smacking bowlful of nutritious, nourishing Ubik toasted flakes, the adult cereal that’s more crunchy, more tasty, more ummmish. Ubik breakfast cereal, the whole-bowl taste treat!
Office gossip annoyed him because it always proved better than the truth.
Who threw the stone at me? he asked himself. No one. But why does it bother me? I’ve undergone it before, during fusion. While using my empathy box, like everyone else. This isn’t new. But it was. Because, he thought, I did it alone.
The termination of a relationship,” he said, “is not a misunderstanding. It’s a reorganization of life.
She was a redhead and he liked redheads; they were either outrageously ugly or almost supernaturally attractive.
What you should do,” she told Fat during one of his darker hours, “is get into studying the characteristics of the T-34.” Fat asked what that was. It turned out that Sherri had read a book on Russion armor during World War Two. The T-34 tank had been the Soviet Union’s salvation and thereby the salvation of all the Allied Powers- and, by extension, Horselover Fat’s, since without the T-34 he would be speaking – not english or Latin or the koine – but German.
Life which we can no longer distinguish; life carefully buried up to its forehead in the carcass of a dead world. In every cinder of the universe Mercer probably perceives inconspicuous life. Now I know, he thought. And once having seen through Mercer’s eyes, I probably will never stop.
Despair like that, about total reality, is self-perpetuating.
Nothing could be more impolite. To say, “Is your sheep genuine?” would be a worse breach of manners.
Parcifal is one of those corkscrew artifact of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you’ve learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you suddenly begin to scratch your head and say “Wait a minute. This makes no sense.
Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.
Anti-cat is one jump away from anti-Semitism.