Philip K. Dick Quotes

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It's just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she's the daughter of alcoholics who'd leave her alone at Christmas time.

I didn't want to be the daughter of the crazy people.

Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too. And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone—I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.

I come from a broken home. My parents split up when I was nine. Everyone gave me a good wallop. But I come from a time when you just put up with that, you got on with things rather than sitting moaning about them.

It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.

For the first five years of my life, things felt pretty good. A lot went wrong after that, family-wise.

I pretended I was living with a television family and there was no yelling at home and no one hit me.

My mother did what many men do. She left.

I grew up in a family of secrets; there was a lot of pathology in the family.

However, if you listen to me I think you can hear years of abuse in my voice - both bad abuse and good abuse.

Love yourself instead of abusing yourself.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family.

All my life, I had this idea that if I could unravel the mystery that was my mother, then I could help save her. But it didn't really work. We were close, but she struggled with mental illness and alcoholism, and it was rough at times.

My father's violence is the central fact of my art and my life.

I was an abused kid.

Injuries are nothing to be ashamed about.

Many children in the foster care system are often in the midst of a family challenge.

Children are often the silent victims of drug abuse.

I was never taught how to raise a child, because I wasn't raised properly.

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.

I hated my childhood. It was loathsome. My parents were deaf and dumb. Profoundly so. They could make noises when they were emotionally aroused, but they couldn't form it into speech.

There was a lot of brokenness in my family. Let's just say that I was raised by my grandparents.

When you live in an alcoholic family or an abusive family, you tiptoe, you don't want to step on any mines.

I became the unnatural son of a few score of beaten men.