Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was coming from.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“...Hey, what happened with all that anyway?'
'Just life,' said Arthur, and plucked a beer from a six-pack.
'Oh, that again,' said Ford. 'I thought it might be something like that. I prefer this stuff,' he said as Rick's bar flickered onto the screen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The first non-absolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts

“Bianchi lenzuoli irlandesi, appena inamidati, puliti, stirati, ben rimboccati - questi aggettivi erano per lui come una litania di desiderio. Da secoli nulla l'aveva attratto come ora le lenzuola. Non riusciva assolutamente a concepire come si potesse desiderare qualcos'altro. Lenzuola. E dormire. Dormire e lenzuola. Dormire nelle lenzuola. Dormire.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Buz dolabına adeta dans ederek gitti, içindeki açısından en az tüylü üç şeyi buldu ve onları bir tabağa koyarak iki dakika boyunca dikkatle izledi. Bu süre içinde hareket etmek için herhangi bir girişimde bulunmadıklarından dolayı onları kahvaltı oalrak adlandırdı ve yedi.”
― Douglas Adams

“He was also alarmed at the number of spaceship crashes he had to start incorporating into his holy stories if he was to hold the attention of the villagers, and not have them rushing off to peer at Random’s wrist all the time.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“thus was the Empire forged.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Don’t pick it up, pick it up, pick i— “Don’t pick it up, pick it up, pick i— “Don’t pick it up, pick it up, pick i—”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Two places away to the left was the don who had been Richard’s Director of Studies in English, who showed no signs of recognising him at all. This was hardly surprising since Richard had spent his three years here assiduously avoiding him, often to the extent of growing a beard and pretending to be someone else.”
― Douglas Adams

“and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“History is never altered you see, it just fits together like a jigsaw. Funny old thing, life, isn’t it?”
― Douglas Adams, Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 2 of 3

“Er, well, um - there's one which is that a patient wakes up after having, well, that is, he's been to, er, to surgery, and he wakes up and, it's not very good, but anyway, he's been to surgery and he says to the doctor when he wakes up, 'Doctor, doctor, what's wrong with me, I can't feel my legs.' And the doctor says, `Yes, I'm afraid we've had to amputate both your arms.' And that's it really. Er, that's why he couldn't feel his legs, you see.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“The President of the Galaxy”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If I hadn’t happened then to duck down a side street and pass a hotel where a convention for the deaf was being held, there is every chance that my mind would have cracked completely”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“For instance, 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—while 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 far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I think media are at their most interesting before anybody’s thought of calling them art, when people still think they’re just a load of junk.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Ship?” he called. “Yup?” said the ship. “Do what I do.” The ship thought about this for a few milliseconds and then, after double checking all the seals on its heavy duty bulkheads, it began slowly, inexorably, in the hazy blaze of its lights, to sink to the lowest depths.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It was odd, Kate reflected, that people who needed to bully you were the easiest to push around.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say five minutes late. It”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into his mind. It was very clear and very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His instinct was to resist them. They were the pre-ordained promptings from the dark and locked off parts of his mind.

He sat still and ignored the thought furiously. It nagged at him.

He ignored it. It nagged at him. He ignored it. It nagged at him.

He gave in to it.

What the hell, he thought, go with the flow. He was too tired, confused and hungry to resist. He didn't even know what the thought meant.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“In so far as it is possible for a green blur to arch its eyebrows disdainfully, this is what the green blur now did.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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

“He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the ribcage of a stegosaurus. ‘It was made out of the ribcage of a stegosaurus,’ explained the old man”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Just as a slow series of clicks when speeded up will lose the definition of each individual click and gradually take on the quality of a sustained and rising tone, so a series of individual impressions here took on the quality of a sustained emotion”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He experienced one of those “self” moments, one of those moments when you suddenly turn around and look at yourself and think “Who am I? What am I up to? What have I achieved? Am I doing well?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy