Douglas Adams > Quotes

“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

“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