Douglas Adams > Quotes

“So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan, and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight—the locals wouldn’t stand a chance.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“You know,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’ ‘Why, what did she tell you?’ ‘I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“My name,' said the mattress, 'is Zem. We could discuss the weather a little.' Marvin paused again in his weary circular pplod. 'The dew,' he observed, 'has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.' He resumed his walk, as if inspired by this conversational outburst to fresh heights of gloom and despondency. He plodded tenaciously. If he had had teeth he would have gritted them at this point. He hadn't. He didn't. The mere plod said it all. The mattress flolloped around.”
― Douglas Adams

“They would appear,” said Ford doubtfully, “to have turned into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised-looking whale”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He had had a terribly therapeutic yell at his prisoners and was now feeling quite relaxed and ready for a little callousness. The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation chairs—strapped in. Vogons suffered no illusions as to the regard their works were generally held in. Their early attempts at composition had been part of a bludgeoning insistence that they be accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Never throw the letter Q into a privet bush.”
― Douglas Adams

“Hey, who are you?” he quacked. “Where are you? What’s going on and is there any way of stopping it?” “Please relax,” said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines, one of which is on fire, “you are perfectly safe.” “But that’s not the point!” raged Ford. “The point is that I am now a perfectly safe penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!” “It’s all right, I’ve got them back now,” said Arthur. “Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling,” said the voice. “Admittedly,” said Arthur, “they’re longer than I usually like them, but …” “Isn’t there anything,” squawked Ford in avian fury, “you feel you ought to be telling us?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He would insult the Universe. That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“They consulted the computer. It said: “I regret I have been temporarily closed to all communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music.” They turned off the light music.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in”
― Douglas Adams

“Beş yıldır tamamen kör olduğuna inanmışken ansızın, aslında yalnızca çok büyük bir şapka giymekte olduğunu fark eden bir adam kadar şaşkındı.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Well, no, not married as such, but yes, there is a specific girl that I'm not married to.”
― Douglas Adams

“You want to check your legal position, you do, mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job, aren’t we? I mean, what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The people of New Zealand are generally terribly nice. Everybody we had met so far had been terribly nice to us. Terribly nice and eager to please. I realised now that all this relentless niceness and geniality to which we had been subjected had got to me rather badly. New Zealand niceness is not merely disarming, it’s decapitating as well, and I had come to feel that if Just one more person was pleasant and genial at me I’d hit him.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance To See

“My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber,” he muttered to himself, “and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it. 'It's just life,' they say.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Arthur and Trillian had the fixed expressions of rabbits on a night road who think that the best way of dealing with approaching headlights is to stare them out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Dirk looked at her expressionlessly. Apart from being extremely good-looking in a blondish, willowyish kind of way, she was dressed well in an “I don’t care what I wear, just any old thing that’s lying around” kind of way that relies on extremely careful about what you leave lying around.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer’s movement in restaurants.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“The horse, it must be said, was quite surprised.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He was trying to marshal his arguments for proving that he did not now constitute a mental-health hazard himself. He was far from certain about this – his mind seemed to be full of noise, horses, smoke, and the stench of blood.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Luckily," he went on, "you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as 'impossible' in my dictionary. In fact," he added, brandishing the abused book, "everything between 'herring' and 'marmalade' appears to be missing.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Fuck ’em,” said Ford, slumping on the bed. “You can’t care about every damn thing.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“There was only one ambition that anyone on the planet ever had, and that was to leave.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Yeah, I'm sure that's him," he would add when shown a picture of Gordon Way. "I only wasn't sure at first because in the picture he's got his mouth closed.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. Listen …”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The chances of finding out what's really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do his hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“If the insurance company failed to pay up—which seemed increasingly likely in light of the strategy that insurance companies had adopted in recent years, of merely advertising their services rather than actually providing them—Dirk”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“It’s printed in the Earthman’s brainwave patterns,” continued Marvin, “but I don’t suppose you’ll be very interested in knowing that.” “You mean,” said Arthur, “you mean you can see into my mind?” “Yes,” said Marvin. Arthur stared in astonishment. “And…?” he said. “It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small.” “Ah,” said Arthur, “abuse.” “Yes,” confirmed Marvin. “Ah, ignore him,” said Zaphod, “he’s only making it up.” “Making it up?” said Marvin, swiveling his head in a parody of astonishment. “Why should I want to make anything up? Life’s bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy