Christopher Wallace

“Old Phoebe said something then, but I couldn't hear her. She had the side of her mouth right smack on the pillow, and I couldn't hear her.

"What?" I said. "Take your mouth away. I can't hear you with your mouth that way."

"You don't like anything that's happening."

It made me even more depressed when she said that.

"Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don't say that. Why the hell do you say that?"

"Becuase you don't. You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't."

"I do! That's where you're wrong - that's exactly where you're wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that?" I said. Boy, was she depressing me.

"Because you don't," she said. "Name one thing."

"One thing? One thing I like?" I said. "Okay."

The trouble was, I couldn't concentrate too hot. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate.

"One thing I like a lot you mean? I asked her.

She didn't answer me, though. She was in a cockeyed position way the hell over the other side of the bed. She was about a thousand miles away. "C'mon, answer me," I said. "One thing I like a lot, or one thing I just like?"

"You like a lot."

"All right," I said. But the trouble was, I couldn't concentrate.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“To Alys he had once said, “They will never take over and run my world.”

“You don’t have a world. You have an office.”

At that pointed he terminated the discussion.”
― Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

“I'm doomed, in the classic sense.”
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik

“What?" I said to old Phoebe. She said something me, but I didn't hear her.

"You can't even think of one thing."

"Yes, I can. Yes, I can."

"Well, do it, then."

"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and-"

"Allie's dead - You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really-"

"I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake - especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."

Old Phoebe didn't say anything. When she can't think of anything to say, she doesn't say a goddam word.

"Anyway, I like it now," I said. "I mean right now. Sitting here with you and just chewing the fat and horsing -"

"That isn't anything really!"

"It is so something really! Certainly, it is. Why the hell isn't it? People never think anything is anything really, I'm getting goddam sick of it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye