Douglas Adams > Quotes

“He gestured Arthur toward a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. “It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“His head was swimming freestyle, but someone in his stomach was doing the butterfly.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“What’s that?” he yelped. “Don’t worry,” said Ford, “they haven’t started yet.” “Thank God for that,” said Arthur, and relaxed. “It’s probably just your house being knocked down,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Groop I implore thee,” continued the merciless Vogon, “my foonting turlingdromes.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“But what about the End of the Universe? We’ll miss the big moment.” “I’ve seen it. It’s rubbish,” said Zaphod, “nothing but a gnab gib.” “A what?” “Opposite of a big bang.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The girl he had dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly over the last hour, and it would probably have been a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and a half or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came she would be too busy evaporating herself to notice it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me,” intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. “A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate—and yet I will design it for you. A computer that can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called…the Earth.” Phouchg”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“– Ну, сколько у нас спасательных капсул?
– Ни одной.
– Хорошо пересчитал?
– Два раза”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Frank Halford was a master at the school and remembers Adams as “very tall even then, and popular. He wrote an end-of-term play when Doctor Who had just started on television. He called it ‘Doctor Which.’ ” Many years later, Adams did write scripts for Doctor Who. He describes Halford as an inspirational teacher who is still a support. “He once gave me ten out of ten for a story, which was the only time he did throughout his long school career. And even now, when I have a dark night of the soul as a writer and think that I can’t do this anymore, the thing that I reach for is not the fact that I have had best-sellers or huge advances. It is the fact that Frank Halford once gave me ten out of ten, and at some fundamental level I must be able to do it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What I lost, I think, was a whole other life."

"Everybody does that. Every moment of every day. Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don't notice. Some we do. Sounds like you noticed one.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Povero me!’ dice Dio. ‘Non ci avevo pensato!’ e sparisce immediatamente in una nuvoletta di logica.
“‘Oh, com’è stato facile!’ dice l’Uomo, e, per fare il bis, passa a dimostrare che il nero è bianco, per poi finire ucciso sul primo attraversamento pedonale che successivamente incontra.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Is it anything to do with this?” she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travel-worn as if it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapored oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words “Don’t Panic.”
― 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.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has or rather had a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Sempre há um momento em que você começa a se desapaixonar, seja por uma pessoa ou uma ideia ou uma causa, mesmo que seja um momento que você só narra para si mesmo anos após o acontecimento: uma coisinha pequena, uma palavra errada, uma nota desafinada, que significa que as coisas nunca mais serão exatamente as mesmas.”
― Douglas Adams

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.’)”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever. This is not her story.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“He felt a tug of sadness that someone who had seemed so shiningly alive within the small confines of a university community should have seemed to fade so much in the light of common day.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project.” “Ah,” said the marketing girl, “well, we’re having a little difficulty there.” “Difficulty?” exclaimed Ford. “Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!” The marketing girl soured him with a look “All right, Mr. Wiseguy,” she said, “you’re so clever, you tell us what color it should be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation hold its breath.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“In fact I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was in fact taken.” At”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than The Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see in infrared,
How I hate the night.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Come,’ called the old man, ‘come now or you will be late.’ ‘Late?’ said Arthur. ‘What for?’ ‘What is your name, human?’ ‘Dent. Arthur Dent,’ said Arthur. ‘Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent,’ said the old man, sternly. ‘It’s a sort of threat you see.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Non è sufficiente credere alla bellezza di un giardino? Che bisogno c'è di credere che nasconda delle fate?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Does the number,” said Arthur gently, “forty-two mean anything to you at all?” “What? No, what are you talking about?” exclaimed Fenchurch.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy