It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I will again. It was no accide… - Philip K. Dick

The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him — should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living. That, he reasoned, is the law of life. And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so. The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera.

Dr. Leon Stone turned out to be one of the most important people in Horselover Fat's life. To get to Stone, Fat had to nearly kill himself physically, matching his mental death. Is this what they mean about God's mysterious ways? How else could Fat have linked up with Leon Stone? Only some dismal act of the order of a suicide attempt, a truly lethal attempt, would have achieved it; Fat had to die, or nearly die, to be cured. Or nearly cured.

It seems to me that in many ways, ideas have a life of their own. They appear to seize on people and make use of them.