Douglas Adams > Quotes

“None of these facts, however strange or inexplicable, is as strange or inexplicable as the rules of the game of Brockian Ultra Cricket, as played in the higher dimensions. A full set of rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together in a single volume they underwent gravitational collapse and became a Black Hole.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“brought forth scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees of breathtaking slenderness and color which the Vogons cut down and burned the crabmeat with; elegant gazellelike creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“ART: None. The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn’t a mirror big enough—see point one.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but not so carelessly that it didn't land on something soft”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It was what he had waited for all these years, but when he had deciphered the signal pattern sitting alone in his small dark room, a coldness had gripped him and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought, didn’t it just have to be the Vogons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire “intelligent” population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Genügt es denn nicht, dass ein Garten schön ist, ohne dass man unbedingt glauben muss, dass Feen darin hausen?”
― Douglas Adams, Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis/Das Restaurant am Ende des Universums

“La principale differenza tra una cosa che potrebbe rompersi e una cosa che non può in alcun modo rompersi è che quando una cosa che non può in alcun modo rompersi si rompe, di solito risulta impossibile da riparare.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Trillian 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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We only ever had the one sun at home,” persevered Arthur. “I came from a planet called Earth, you know.” “I know,” said Marvin, “you keep going on about it. It sounds awful.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question How can we eat?, the second by the question Why do we eat?, and the third but the question Where shall we have lunch?”
― Douglas Adams

“There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambigiuous phyiscal universe.”
― Douglas Adams

“That was where I went wrong,” the madman yelled, “I actually said that I preferred scallops and he said it was because I hadn’t had real lobster like they did where his ancestors came from, which was here, and he’d prove it. He said it was no problem, he said the lobster here was worth a whole journey, let alone the small diversion it would take to get here, and he swore he could handle the ship in the atmosphere, but it was madness, madness!” he screamed, and paused with his eyes rolling, as if the word had rung some kind of bell in his mind. “The ship went right out of control! I couldn’t believe what we were doing and just to prove a point about lobster which is really so overrated as a food, I’m sorry to go on about lobsters so much, I’ll try and stop in a minute, but they’ve been on my mind so much for the months I’ve been in this tank, can you imagine what it’s like to be stuck in a ship with the same guys for months eating junk food when all one guy will talk about is lobster and then spend six months floating by yourself in a tank thinking about it. I promise I will try and shut up about the lobsters, I really will. Lobsters, lobsters, lobsters—enough! I think I’m the only survivor. I’m the only one who managed to get to an emergency tank before we went down. I sent out the Mayday and then we hit. It’s a disaster, isn’t it? A total disaster, and all because the guy liked lobsters.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He headed to the outer Eastern rim of the Galaxy, where it was said, wisdom and truth were to be found, most particularly on planet Hawalius, which was a planet of oracles and seers and soothsayers and also take-out pizza parlors, because most mystics were completely incapable of cooking for themselves.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“His house was certainly peculiar, and since this was the first thing that Fenchurch and Arthur had encountered it would help to know what it was like.

It was like this:

It was inside out.

Actually inside out, to the extent that they had had to park on the carpet.

All along what one would normally call the outer wall, which was decorated in a tasteful interior-designed pink, were bookshelves, also a couple of those odd three-legged tables with semicircular tops which stand in such a way as to suggest that someone just dropped the wall straight through them, and pictures which were clearly designed to soothe.

Where it got really odd was the roof.

It folded back on itself like something that M. C. Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which it is no part of this narrative’s purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with all the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up.

Confusing.

The sign above the front door said “Come Outside,” and so, nervously, they had.

Inside, of course, was where the Outside was. Rough brickwork, nicely done pointing, guttering in good repair, a garden path, a couple of small trees, some rooms leading off.

And the inner walls stretched down, folded curiously, and opened at the end as if, by an optical illusion which would have had M. C. Escher frowning and wondering how it was done, to enclose the Pacific Ocean itself.

“Hello,” said John Watson, Wonko the Sane.

Good, they thought to themselves, “hello” is something we can cope with.

“Hello,” they said, and all, surprisingly, was smiles.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“Maybe eBooks are going to take over, one day, but not until those whizzkids in Silicon Valley invent a way to bend the corners, fold the spine, yellow the pages, add a coffee ring or two and allow the plastic tablet to fall open at a favourite page.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“[...]tutta quanta la stanza era in ogni suo punto ugualmente piena di tazzine sporche, di scarpe e di posacenere pieni che si scambiavano ormai i ruoli l'uno con l'altro.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you—daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphising animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, becuase it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human. We each make our own accommodation with the world and learn to survive in it in different ways. What works as successful behaviour for us does not work for lizards, and vice versa.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans. We bid you farewell.” And then the sound of long, heavy, perfectly gray bodies rolling away into an unknown fathomless deep, quietly giggling.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“On a waiter’s check pad,” said Slartibartfast, “reality and unreality collide on such a fundamental level that each becomes the other and anything is possible, within certain parameters.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this - ‘If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find his will beginning to weaken. He didn’t realize that this was because of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyper-space ports that served the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Predicting the future is a mug’s game, but any game is improved when you can actually keep the score.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“City of Vassillian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished. The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back. All this lay in the planet’s remote past.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“It was a world called Bartledan”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always
appreciated.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“O Deep Thought computer,” he said, “the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us …” he paused, “the Answer!” “The Answer?” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to what?” “Life!” urged Fook. “The Universe!” said Lunkwill. “Everything!” they said in chorus. Deep Thought paused for a moment’s reflection. “Tricky,” he said finally. “But can you do it?” Again, a significant pause. “Yes,” said Deep Thought, “I can do it.” “There is an answer?” said Fook with breathless excitement. “A simple answer?” added Lunkwill. “Yes,” said Deep Thought. “Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But,” he added, “I’ll have to think about it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy