Douglas Adams > Quotes

“You have carjacking back in old England?”

“Carjacking?”

“People walk up to you, steal your car.”

“No, but thanks for asking. We have people who clean your windscreen against your will, but, er...”

Joe barked with contempt.

“The thing is,” explained Dirk, “in London you could certainly walk up to someone and steal their car, but you wouldn't be able to drive it away.”

“Some kinda fancy device?”

“No, just traffic,” said Dirk.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Albacete (AL-ba-seet) n. A single surprisingly long hair growing in the middle of nowhere.”
― Douglas Adams, The Deeper Meaning of Liff

“Oh, and Zaphod?"
"Er, yeah?"
"If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you're in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner..."
"Yeah?"
"Please don't hesitate to get lost.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I’ve had the sort of day that would make Saint Francis of Assisi kick babies.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Antananarivo is pronounced Tananarive, and for much of this century has been spelt that way as well. When the French took over Madagascar at the end of the last century (colonised is probably too kind a word for moving in on a country that was doing perfectly well for itself but which the French simply took a fancy to), they were impatient with the curious Malagasy habit of not bothering to pronounce the first and last syllables of place names. They decided, in their rational Gallic way, that if that was how the names were pronounced then they could damn well be spelt that way too. It would be rather as if someone had taken over England and told us that from now on we would be spelling Leicester 'Lester' and liking it. We might be forced to spell it that way, but we wouldn't like it, and neither did the Malagasy. As soon as they managed to divest themselves of French rule, in 1960, they promptly reinstated all the old spellings and just kept the cooking and the bureaucracy.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“Sorry, can I interrupt you a moment, Peter, and say that the sofa has just vanished.’ ‘So it has. Well, that’s one mystery less.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything

“Trilllian had come to suspect that the main reason he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Here’s an interesting little notion. Did you realize that most people’s lives are governed by telephone numbers?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a few seconds he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense...”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“had a memory that he himself had once compared to the Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly, in that it was colorful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub-meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Did you ever go to a place . . . I think it was called Norway?” “No,” said Arthur, “no, I didn’t.” “Pity,” said Slartibartfast, “that was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear of its destruction.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Trin Tragula—for that was his name—was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or as his wife would have it, an idiot.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The first letter was a “w,” the second an “e.” Then there was a gap. An “a” followed, then a “p,” an “o,” and an “l.” Marvin paused for a rest. After a few moments they resumed and let him see the “o,” the “g,” the “i,” the “z,” and the “e.” The next two words were “for” and “the.” The last one was a long one, and Marvin needed another rest before he could tackle it. It started with “i,” then “n,” then “c.” Next came an “o” and an “n,” followed by a “v,” an “e,” another “n,” and an “i.” After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength for the last stretch. He read the “e,” the “n,” the “c,” and at last the final “e,” and staggered back into their arms.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Laser light flickered all over him as if he was a packet of biscuits at a super-market check-out.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Anything that happens, happens.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“When Arthur had been a boy at school, long before the Earth had been demolished, he had used to play football. He had not been at all good at it, and his particular speciality had been scoring own goals in important matches.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It’s all right,’ he insisted, ‘I’m perfectly well. Thought I heard, well, a noise
that startled me. But it was nothing. Just overcome with the tea fumes, I expect”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Arthur had almost given up. That is to say, he was not going to give up. He was absolutely not going to give up. Not now. Not ever. But if he had been the sort of person who was going to give up, this was probably the time he would have done it.”
― Douglas Adams

“It now transpired that the man in front of her didn’t actually have a ticket at all, and the argument then began to range freely and angrily over such topics as the physical appearance of the airline check-in girl, her qualities as a person, theories about her ancestors, speculations as to what surprises the future might have in store for her and the airline for which she worked, and finally lit by chance on the happy subject of the man’s credit card. He didn’t have one.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?” “You ask a glass of water.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Flying is learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
― Douglas Adams, The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide

“You come to me for advice, but you can’t cope with anything you don’t recognize. Hmmm. So we’ll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh? Well, business as usual, I suppose.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?”
― Douglas Adams

“Дюшекът подцопна. Това е действие, което могат да извършват само живи дюшеци в блатата на Скорншелъс Зета, и затова тази дума не е толкова разпространена. Той подцопна някак си симпатично, мърдайки доста хубавото си тяло във водата както си го правеше. Той ангажиращо издуха няколко дреболии под водата. Неговите бели и сини райета кратко просветнаха под един внезапен слаб слънчев лъч, който неочаквано проби мъглата, карайки света наоколо моментално да се огрее на него.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“DIDLING (participal vb.)
The process of trying to work out who did it when reading a whodunnit, and trying to keep your options open so that when you find out you can allow yourself to think that you knew perfectly well who it was all along.”
― Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff

“The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“That sounds perfectly reasonable …” he said in a reassuring tone of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy