Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat.”
― Douglas Adams

“How should a prospective writer go about becoming an author?

First of all, realise that it's very hard, and that writing is a grueling and lonely business and, unless you are extremely lucky, badly paid as well. You had better really, really, really want to do it. Next, you have to write something. Unless you are committed to novel writing exclusively, I suggest that you start out writing for radio. It's still a relatively easy medium to get into because it pays so badly. But it is a great medium for writers because it relies so much on the imagination.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“That’s right,” shouted Vroomfondel, “we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“These muddles were as nothing to the ones which historians had to try and unravel once time trouble was discovered and battles started pre-erupting hundred of years before the issues even arose.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not be in any way exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance. The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea. The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defense system will result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a mouse cage, the bruising of somebody’s upper arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale. In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustains the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Wainwright’s Fruit Emporium. Mr Wainwright is not able to take calls at this time since he is not right in the head and thinks he is a cucumber. Thank you for calling.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“I don’t know why we keep building these fucking dams,” Adams said in a surprisingly forceful British whisper. “Not only do they cause environmental and social disasters, they, with very few exceptions, all fail to do what they were supposed to do in the first place. Look at the Amazon, where they’ve all silted up. What is the reaction to that? They’re going to build another eighty of them. It’s just balmy. We must have beaver genes or something. . . . There’s just this kind of sensational desire to build dams, and maybe that should be looked at and excised from human nature. Maybe the Human Genome Project can locate the beaver/dam-building gene and cut that out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience, or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“the average Vogon will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never been born—or (if you are a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never been born.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see.…” “You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?” “No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.” “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.” “I did,” said Ford. “It is.” “So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?” “It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.” “You mean they actually vote for the lizards?” “Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.” “But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?” “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxiate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds, of course.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galáctica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colorless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Perhaps I would like a glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more likely.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Adams has done a bit of everything, from radio to television to designing computer games. Not all of them worked out.

“These are life’s little learning experiences,” he said. “You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.’

“At the end of all this being-determined-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades, I think I’m better off just sitting down and putting a hundred thousand words in a cunning order.”

Adams writes “slowly and painfully.”

“People assume you sit in a room, looking pensive and writing great thoughts,” he said. “But you mostly sit in a room looking panic-stricken and hoping they haven’t put a guard on the door yet.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were fat more intelligent than man, for precisely the same reason”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“But - but - but!" said Dirk, thumping the table in frustration, "don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“And that is what Mauritius is most famous for: the extinction of the dodo.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“But now he felt as if the whole world were tipping backwards over his head, and this, he couldn’t help feeling, was a very worrying thing for the world to do.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Life was too short, the weather too fine, and the world too full of interesting and exciting pitfalls.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Tips for aliens in New York: ‘Land anywhere, Central Park, anywhere. No one will care, or indeed even notice. ‘Surviving: Get a job as a cab driver immediately. A cab driver’s job is to drive people anywhere they want to go in big yellow machines called taxis. Don’t worry if you don’t know how the machine works and you can’t speak the language, don’t understand the geography or indeed the basic physics of the area, and have large green antennae growing out of your head. Believe me, this is the best way of staying inconspicuous. ‘If your body is really weird try showing it to people in the streets for money.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams

“The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
― Douglas Adams

“Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. Mr. Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn’t anywhere in particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife of course wanted climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn’t know why—he just liked axes. He flushed hotly under the derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“One of the things that people who don't know anything about white rhinoceroses find most interesting about them is their colour.
It isn't white.
Not even remotely. It's a rather handsome dark grey. Not even a sort of pale grey that might arguably pass as an off-white, just plain dark grey. People therefore assume that zoologists are either perverse or colour-blind, but it's not that, it's that they are illiterate.
"White" is a mistranslation of the Afrikaans word "weit" meaning "wide", and it refers to the animal's mouth, which is wider than that of the black rhino.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However, it does go on to say that what with space being the mindboggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Listen, Ford,” said Zaphod, “everything’s cool and froody.” “You mean everything’s under control.” “No,” said Zaphod, “I do not mean everything’s under control. That would not be cool and froody.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Ten million years, Earthman, can you conceive of that kind of time span? A galactic civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time. Gone.” He paused. “Well, that’s bureaucracy for you,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe