Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The courtroom was an austere place, a large dark chamber clearly designed for Justice rather than, for instance, for Pleasure. You wouldn’t hold a dinner party there – at least, not a successful one.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything

“the actual building was old and dilapidated and remained standing more out of habit than from any inherent structural integrity”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“My God,” complained Arthur, “you’re talking about a positive mental attitude and you haven’t even had your planet demolished today. I woke up this morning and thought I’d have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog.… It’s now just after four in the afternoon and I’m already being thrown out of an alien spaceship six light-years from the smoking remains of the Earth!” He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He had been told that when looking for a good oracle, it was best to find the oracle that other oracles went to.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Why,” said Arthur Dent, “isn’t anyone ever pleased to see us?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that it’s vitally important you get away before your phone bill arrives.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“A car, a blue convertible, sleek and desirable, came sweeping west out of Beverly Hills along the, as I understand it, gracious curves of Sunset Boulevard. Anybody seeing such a car would have wanted it. Obviously. It was designed to make you want it. If people had turned out not to want it very much, the makers would have redesigned it and redesigned it until they did. The world is now full of things like this, which is, of course, why everybody is in such a permanent state of want.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Yeah,’ said Zaphod, stepping into it, ‘what else do you do besides talk?’ ‘I go up,’ said the elevator, ‘or down.’ ‘Good,’ said Zaphod. ‘We’re going up.’ ‘Or down,’ the elevator reminded him. ‘Yeah, OK, up please.’ There was a moment of silence. ‘Down’s very nice,’ suggested the elevator hopefully. ‘Oh yeah?’ ‘Super.’ ‘Good,’ said Zaphod. ‘Now will you take us up?’ ‘May I ask you,’ enquired the elevator in its sweetest, most reasonable voice, ‘if you’ve considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Trillian did a little research in the ship's copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It had some advice to offer on drunkenness.

"Go to it," it said, "and good luck.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Life! Don't talk to me about life!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Impact minus twenty seconds, guys . . .” said the computer. “Then turn the bloody engines back on!” bawled Zaphod. “Oh, sure thing, guys,” said the computer.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED"

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”
― Douglas Adams

“DETCHANT (n.)
That part of a hymn (usually a few notes at the end of a verse) where the tune goes so high or low that you suddenly have to change octaves to accommodate it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff

“Тази планета има — или по-точно имаше един проблем: почти всички хора, живеещи на нея, през по-голямата част от живота си се чувстваха нещастни. Много бяха предложенията за решаването на този проблем, но повечето се отнасяха до движението на едни малки зелени късчета хартия. И това е много странно, защото, общо взето, тези малки зелени късчета хартия съвсем не бяха нещастни.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The mess is extraordinary, and has to be seen to be believed, but if you don’t have any particular need to believe it, then don’t go and look because you won’t enjoy it.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbor’s boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Why, how much did you tip him?'
Ford named a figure again.
'I don't know how much it is,' said Arthur. 'What's it worth in pounds sterling? What could it buy you?'
'It would probably buy you, roughly... er...' Ford screwed his eyes up as he did some calculations in his head. 'Switzerland,' he said at last.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“And now we have the World Wide Web (the only thing I know of whose shortened form—www—takes three times longer to say than what it’s short for)”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I like the cover,” he said. “‘Don’t Panic.’ It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The word was out that maybe, just maybe, a British accent would fit. The hair, the skin tone and the bridgework would have to be up to American network standards, but there had been a lot of British accents up there thanking their mothers for their Oscars, a lot of British accents singing on Broadway, and some unusually big audiences tuning in to British accents in wig on Masterpiece Theatre.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“I suppose you’ll want to see the aliens now,” he said. “Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I’m standing?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“And as they drifter up their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do.
Physics shook its head and, looking the other way, concentrated on keeping the cards going along the Euston Road and out over towards the Westway flyover, on keeping the street lights lit and on making sure that when somebody on Baker Street dropped a cheeseburger it went splat on the ground.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds,”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“You can’t throw us into space,” yelled Ford, “we’re trying to write a book.” “Resistance is useless!” shouted the Vogon guard back at him. It was the first phrase he’d learned when he joined the Vogon Guard Corps.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“People often ask me where I get my ideas from, sometimes as often as eighty-seven times a day. This is a well-known hazard for writers, and the correct response to the question is first to breathe deeply, steady your heartbeat, fill your mind with peaceful, calming images of birdsong and buttercups in spring meadows, and then try to say, “Well, it’s very interesting you ask that . . .” before breaking down and starting to whimper uncontrollably. The fact is that I don’t know where ideas come from, or even where to look for them. Nor does any writer. This is not quite true, in fact. If you were writing a book on the mating habits of pigs, you’d probably pick up a few goodish ideas by hanging around a barnyard in a plastic mac, but if fiction is your line, then the only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“According to her watch it was shortly after three o’clock, and according to everything else it was night-time.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul