![Philip K. Dick, The greatest pain does not come zooming down from a distant planet, but up from the depths of the heart. Of course, both could happen; your wife and child could leave you, and you could be sitting alone in your father's] empty house with nothing to live for, and in addition the Martians could bore through the roof and get you.'](/uploads/8/1/9/1/8191744/pkd-father-thing.jpg)
'The basic premise dominating my stories is that if I ever met an extraterrestrial intelligence (more commonly called a "creature from outer space") I would find I had more to say to it than to my next-door neighbor… The way out of living in the middle of an under-imaginative figment is to make contact, in your own mind, with other civilizations as yet unborn.
[…]
'[W]hen my life was simpler and made sense I could tell the difference between the real world and the world I wrote about… Later, when my personal life became more complicated and full of unfortunate convolutions… I became educated to the fact that the greatest pain does not come zooming down from a distant planet, but up from the depths of the heart. Of course, both could happen; your wife and child could leave you, and you could be sitting alone in your [father's] empty house with nothing to live for, and in addition the Martians could bore through the roof and get you.'
Philip K. Dick, 'Afterthought by the Author', The Best of Philip K. Dick, 1976
[…]
'[W]hen my life was simpler and made sense I could tell the difference between the real world and the world I wrote about… Later, when my personal life became more complicated and full of unfortunate convolutions… I became educated to the fact that the greatest pain does not come zooming down from a distant planet, but up from the depths of the heart. Of course, both could happen; your wife and child could leave you, and you could be sitting alone in your [father's] empty house with nothing to live for, and in addition the Martians could bore through the roof and get you.'
Philip K. Dick, 'Afterthought by the Author', The Best of Philip K. Dick, 1976
