Douglas Adams > Quotes

“there seemed to be something faintly odd about his semicousin that he couldn’t put his finger on. The fact that he had become President of the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as was the manner of his leaving the post. Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomability into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It may not be terribly important that from five thousand miles away you can reach into a university corridor and drop a Coca-Cola can, but it’s the first shot in the war of bringing to us a whole new way of communicating. So that, I think, is the fourth age of sand.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“And you saw yourself," said Gargravarr, "in relation to it all?"
"Oh, yeah yeah."
"But...what did you experience?"
Zaphod shrugged smugly.
"It just told me what I knew all the time. I'm a really terrific and great guy. Didn't I tell you, baby, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The main trade that was carried out was in the skins of the NowWhattian boghog but it wasn’t a very successful one because no one in their right minds would want to buy a NowWhattian boghog skin. The trade only hung on by its fingernails because there was always a significant number of people in the Galaxy who were not in their right minds.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“A bit like a preying mantis that doesn’t prey—a non-preying mantis if you like.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“It is a West zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of subtropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close. No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant life forms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials from the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to 'have a nice diurnal anomaly.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“I am here,’ said the voice slowly. ‘My body wanted to come but it’s a bit busy at the moment. Things to do, people to see.’ After what seemed like a sort of ethereal sigh it added, ‘You know how it is with bodies.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“IT CAN HARDLY be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.” Airports”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Arthur could almost imagine Paul McCartney sitting with his feet up by the fire one evening”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Well, I’ve found the answer. Forgive me if you knew this already, perhaps I’m the last person in the world to find this out. Anyway, the answer is this: you grip the palmtop between both hands and you type with your thumbs. Seriously. It works.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Keşke gençken annemi dinleseydim diyorum.'
'Neden, ne derdi sana?'
'Bilmem, hiç dinlemedim ki.”
― Douglas Adams, Otostopçu'nun Galaksi Rehberi

“The human race is currently sitting round a rock on the other side of this hill making documentaries about themselves.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Forty-two.”
― Douglas Adams

“Raffia-wrapped bottles lurked hideously in the shadows.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.”
― Douglas Adams

“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 is also unto you. And it shall be called... the Earth.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“He should have known it was all wrong the moment they started hanging grand pianos over the sea-monster pool in the atrium.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn’t know about.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Se ti chiedessi dove diavolo siamo – disse Arthur con voce fioca – potrei poi pentirmene? Ford si alzò. – Siamo in salvo – disse. – Oh, bene! – disse Arthur. – Siamo in una piccola cambusa – disse Ford – in una delle astronavi della Flotta Costruzioni Stradali Vogon. – Ah! – disse Arthur. – Questo è un modo di usare l’espressione in salvo che ancora non conoscevo.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“What do you consider the most interesting man-made structure in the galaxy?

The dam they are building at the Three Gorges on the Yangtse. Though perhaps '“baffling'” would be a better word. Dams almost never do what they were intended to do, but create devastation beyond belief. And yet we keep on building them, and I can'’t help but wonder why. I'’m convinced that if we go back far enough in the history of the human species, we will find some beaver genes creeping in there somewhere. It'’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
― Douglas Adams

“He seemed nervous of the expectant awed hush, He cleared his throat.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“He's just this guy, you know?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Wandering around the Web is like living in a world in which every doorway is actually one of those science-fiction devices that deposit you in a completely different part of the world when you walk through them. In fact it isn’t like it, it is it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“When you’re young, and just emerging from the four walls of home into the wide world outside, that’s exactly when you feel so small, like Arthur Dent, all alone in the universe. That’s when you act as wildly two-headed as Zaphod. That’s when you really need someone to say ‘Don’t Panic’. It’s the perfect age to mutter a heartfelt ‘Oh no, not again,’ a phrase so much wiser than today’s ‘Whatever’.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“¿Cómo puedo saber que el pasado no es una ficción inventada para explicar la discrepancia entre mis sensaciones físicas inmediatas y mi estado de ánimo?”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship—he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon’s work. Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury, Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig’s desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We’ll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The phone wavered in Richard's hand. He was holding it about half an inch away from his ear anyway because it seemed that somebody had dipped the earpiece in some chow mein recently, but that wasn't so bad. It was a public telephone so it was clearly an oversight that it was working at all.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“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,” explained the old man”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Marvin flashed her an electronic look.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy