Biographile’s This Week in History remembers events of the past, and the icons that set them in motion. If you're stirred by the words below, read on for more inspiring author quotes.

Philip Kindred Dick -- born this week in history on December 16, 1928 -- was one of the most iconic science fiction writers of the twentieth century. His career spanned three decades, from 1952 to 1982, during which he wrote thirty-six novels and five short story collections. He wrote in the genre well before it entered the mainstream and reveled in the experimental abilities it afforded.

His short life was marked by death even from infancy: his twin sister died shortly after their birth. His experience only grew darker with substance abuse issues, premature deaths of friends, and failed marriages. For Dick, exploring alternate universes was a way of making sense of (and jabbing at) our own world. Thanks to his shrewd intelligence, his alternate realities were often eerily prescient, doubling as weather vanes for our own future.

Dick's writing explored pioneering parallel universes, dystopias, and hallucinatory realities that all teetered on the cutting edge of science fiction. As he grappled with a tortured mind, fed by drug abuse, a string of semi-autobiographical elements became woven into his work, helping create a voice filled with an air of both the familiar and the fantastical.

Dick passed away from multiple strokes in 1982, but his work continued to grow after his death. Not only has he influenced the likes of Jonathan Lethem and Ursula K. Le Guin, he was also the source material for no fewer than eleven movies, including the likes of "Blade Runner," "Total Recall," "Minority Report," and "The Adjustment Bureau."

So in honor of what would have been his 86th birthday, we've assembled some of his strangest thoughts and wisest words below.

1. Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night. (What The Dead Men Say, 1964)

2. I'm not much but I'm all I have. (Martian Time-Slip, 1964)

3. When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet. (VALIS, 1981)

4. Reality denied comes back to haunt. (Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, 1974)

5. Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it. (The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, 1982)

6. Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then. (A Scanner Darkly, 1972)

7. Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy... fear makes you always, always hold something back. (VALIS, 1981)

8. How undisturbed, the sleep of the foolish. (Radio Free Albemuth, 1985)

9. We all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people. (Counter-Clock World, 1967)

10. No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it. (Galactic Pot-Healer 1969)

11. Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how. (A Scanner Darkly, 1972)