Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
The first time I saw this quote, I thought it was likely fake. In other settings and times, Dick was no fan of reality. In 1980, for example, he wrote,
I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards, I’m out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality. That’s what science fiction is all about.