Quotes from Ubik ( 1969 )

"Burial is barbaric," Herbert muttered aloud. "Remnant of the primitive origins of our culture."

It was a tranquil sight, these faithfuls, coming as they did so regularly to pay homage. They brought messages, news of what took place in the outside world; they cheered the gloomy half-lifers in these intervals of cerebral activity. And - they paid Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. It was a profitable business, operating a moratorium.

Defend your privacy, the ads yammered on the hour, from all media. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone?

"I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt…You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.

On her bare, dark forearm he made out a tattoo, CAVEAT EMPTOR, it read. He wondered what that meant.

"…I guess you can't live very long without arousing hostility; you can't please everybody, because people want different things. Please one and you displease another."

Ubik drops you back in the thick of things fast. Taken as directed, Ubik speeds relief to head and stomach. Remember: Ubik is only seconds away. Avoid prolonged use.

How can you dream lines of poetry you don't know?

Amazing, that someone as wealthy and powerful as Mick could be so shortsighted, so goddam miserly.

"You're a policeman guarding human privacy."

G.G. Ashwood, wearing his customary natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top and train-engineer's tall hat, shrugged indifferently. He, obviously, saw nothing wrong.

So try Ubik, and be loved. Warning: use only as directed. And with caution.

"All our medical care…is free. But the burden of proof that he is genuinely ill rests on the shoulders of the alleged patient."

The phone said tinnily, "This is a recording." It expelled the punch card vigorously.

"The UN ought to abolish half-life…As interfering with the natural process of the cycle of birth and death."

"If God approved of half-life, each of us would be born in a casket filled with dry ice."

"One of these days…people like me will rise up and overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and compassion and simple warmth will return, and when that happens someone like myself who has gone through an ordeal and who genuinely needs hot coffee to pick him up and keep him functioning when he has to function will get the hot coffee whether he happens to have a poscred readily available or not."

But, he thought, this is a projection on my part. It isn't the universe which is being entombed by layers of wind, cold, darkness and ice; all this is going on within me, and yet I seem to see it outside.

JUMP IN THE URINAL AND STAND ON YOUR HEAD. I'M THE ONE THAT'S ALIVE. YOU'RE ALL DEAD.

"…by making use of the most advanced techniques of present-day science, the reversion of matter to earlier forms can be reversed, and at a price any conapt owner can afford."

Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately - and against ordinary experience - vanishes. The man contains - not the boy - but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.

"Five cents, please," his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn't changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city…if not the whole world.

Maybe I ought to drink down a tablespoon of Ubik liver and kidney balm, he said to himself grimly. With those ingredients it ought to kill me fairly throughly. But it did not strike him as the kind of death he could welcome. The cobalt chloride would do it, very slowly and agonizingly, unless the digitalis managed it first.

Like the geuine cowhide wallet, this particular regression struck him as an improvement; being completely silent, the transportation of his own time lacked this palpable touch of sturdy realism

"I'm not sure…what it is you see."

"Today before the funeral services I looked in a dictionary and I called the public library, but no one knew that word or even what language it is and it isn’t in the dictionary. It isn’t English, the librarian told me. There's a Latin word very close to it - ubique. It means-" "Everywhere," Joe said.

Stepping from his motorcycle, the cop strolled up to Joe, a young, rat-faced man with hard, large eyes; he studied Joe and then said, "Let me see your licence, mister."