THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE - PHILIP K. DICK

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 274

   "How strange," Juliana said. "I never would have thought the truth would make you angry." Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find. I'm lucky.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 268

   "Everyone has—technical secrets. You have yours; I have mine. You should read my book and accept it on face value, just as I accept what I see—" Again he pointed at her with his glass. "Without inquiring if it's genuine underneath, there, or done with wires and staves and foam-rubber padding. Isn't that part of trusting in the nature of people and what you see in general?"

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 260

   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.
   We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 254

   Inner Truth. Pigs and fishes are least intelligent of all; hard to convince. It is I. The book means me. I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me?
   I will wait. I will see. Which it is.
   Perhaps it is both.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 243

   But I do not have to wait for death, for the decomposition of my animus as it wanders in search of a new womb. All the terrifying and beneficent deities; we will bypass them, and the smoky lights as well. And the couples in coitus. Everything except this light. I am ready to face without terror. Notice I do not blench.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 243

   Now talk to me, he told it. Now that you have snared me. I want to hear your voice issuing from the blinding clear white light.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 242

   Metal is from the earth, he thought as he scrutinized. From below: from that realm which is the lowest, the most dense. Land of trolls and caves, dank, always dark. Yin world, in its most melancholy aspect. World of corpses, decay and collapse. Of feces. All that has died, slipping and disintegrating back down layer by layer. The daemonic world of the immutable; the time-that-was.
   And yet, in the sunlight, the silver triangle glittered. It reflected light. Fire, Mr. Tagomi thought. Not dank or dark object at all. Not heavy, weary, but pulsing with life. The high realm, aspect of yang: empyrean, ethereal. As befits work of art. Yes, that is artist's job: takes mineral rock from dark silent earth transforms it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.
   Has brought the dead to life. Corpse turned to fiery display; the past had yielded to the future.
   Which are you? he asked the silver squiggle. Dark dead yin or brilliant living yang? In his palm, the silver squiggle danced and blinded him; he squinted, seeing now only the play of fire.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 242

   When I was a child I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. Now I must seek in other realms.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 241

   One final hopeful glance—he again scrutinized with all that he had. Like child, he told himself. Imitate the innocence and faith. On seashore, pressing randomly found shell to head. Hearing in its blabber the wisdom of the sea.
   This, with eye replacing ear. Enter me and inform what has been done, what it means, why. Compression of understanding into one finite squiggle.
   Asking too much, and so get nothing.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 212

   Time would give Mr. Tagomi perspective. Either that, or he would perhaps retreat into the shadows of mental illness, avert his gaze forever, due to a hopeless perplexity.
   And we are not really different from him, Mr. Baynes thought. We are faced with the same confusions. Therefore unfortunately we can give Mr. Tagomi no help. We can only wait, hoping that finally he will recover and not succumb.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 212

   The crucial point lies not in the present, not in either my death or the death of the two SD men; it lies—hypothetically—in the future. What has happened here is justified, or not justified, by what happens later. Can we perhaps save the lives of millions, all Japan in fact?
   But the man manipulating the vegetable stalks could not think of that; the present, the actuality, was too tangible, the dead and dying Germans on the floor of his office.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 194

   Life is short, he thought. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand. But no longer.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 192

   Christ! We're barbarians compared to them, Childan realized. We're no more than boobs against such pitiless reasoning. Paul did not say—did not tell me—that our art was worthless; he got me to say it for him. And, as a final irony, he regretted my utterance. Faint, civilized gesture of sorrow as he heard the truth out of me.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 186

   "In other words, an entire new world is pointed to, by this. The name for it is neither art, for it has no form, nor religion. What is it? I have pondered this pin unceasingly, yet cannot fathom it. We evidently lack the word for an object like this. So you are right, Robert. It is authentically a new thing on the face of the world."

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 185

   "The hands of the artificer," Paul said, "had wu, and allowed that wu to flow into this piece. Possibly he himself knows only that this piece satisfies. It is complete, Robert. By contemplating it, we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquillity associated not with art but with holy things. I recall a shrine in Hiroshima wherein a shinbone of some medieval saint could be examined. However, this is an artifact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained. By this meditation, conducted by myself at great length since you were last here, I have come to identify the value which this has in opposition to historicity. I am deeply moved, as you may see."

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 144

   Her body and the body of the man in her arms were damp with perspiration. A drop, rolling down Joe's forehead, clung a moment to his cheekbone, then fell to her throat.
   "You're still dripping," she murmured.
   He said nothing. His breathing, long, slow, regular . . . like the ocean, she thought. We're nothing but water inside.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 134

   Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed—all he's got to do is thump on the drum, and there's his response. And he laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 131

   ...black, flaming, the spirit of old seemed for an instant once again to blaze up. The quivering, shambling body jerked taut; the head lifted. Out of the lips that ceaselessly drooled, a croaking half-bark, half-whisper. "Deutsche, hier steh' Ich." Shudders among those who watched and listened, the earphones pressed tightly, strained faces of Russian, American, British and German alike. Yes, Karl thought. Here he stands once more . . . they have beaten us—and more. They have stripped this superman, shown him for what he is.

The Man in the High Castle - Pg 130

   Below in the rubble another handful of survivors buried, without even the sound of death. Death had spread out everywhere equally, over the living, the hurt, the corpses layer after layer that already had begun to smell. The stinking, quivering corpse of Berlin, the eyeless turrets still upraised, disappearing without protest like this one, this nameless edifice that man had once put up with pride.