Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago,” continued Marvin. [...] “And that was with a coffee machine.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“In Relativity, Matter tells Space how to bend, and Space tells Matter how to move.”
― Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy Collection 5 Books Set by Douglas Adams

“Look,” said Zaphod, “will you get it into your heads? That’s just a recorded message. It’s millions of years old. It doesn’t apply to us, get it?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why
are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing
digital watches?”
― Douglas Adams

“Oh freddled gruntbuggly..." he began. Spasms wracked Ford's body - this was worse than even he'd been prepared for.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

“he also had a device that looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million “pages” could be summoned at a moment’s notice.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“But what are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?” “You think you’ve got problems,” said Marvin,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Yeah well …” Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of this conversation, and Ford’s heavy breathing at his side told him that the seconds were ticking away fast. The noise and the shaking had reached terrifying proportions. He saw Trillian’s and Arthur’s faces white and unblinking in the gloom”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“She thought that trying to live life according to any plan you actually work out is like trying to buy ingredients for a recipe from the supermarket. You get one of those carts, which simply will not go in the direction you push it, and end up just having to buy completely different stuff. What do you do with it? What do you do with the recipe? She didn’t know.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn’t the forces of natural selection that designed fish, it must have been an Italian. I”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Hactar had been shocked by the whole idea. He tried to explain that he had been thinking about this Ultimate Weapon business, and had worked out that there was no conceivable consequence of not setting the bomb off that was worse than the known consequence of setting it off, and he had therefore taken the liberty of introducing a small flaw into the design of the bomb, and he hoped that everyone involved would, on sober reflection, feel that”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Well, that was another thing that hadn’t changed. Some people pick their noses, others habitually beat up old ladies on the streets.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“looked as if the various parts of its more or less humanoid body didn’t quite fit properly.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.” “And are you?” “No. That’s where it all falls down, of course.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“there emerged from the car a pair of the sort of legs which sound-track editors are unable to see without needing to slap a smoky saxophone solo all over, for reasons which no one besides sound-track editors has ever been able to understand. In this particular case, however, the saxophone would have been silenced by the proximity of the kazoo which the same sound-track editor would almost certainly have slapped all over the progress of the vehicle. The”
― 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

“The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“thousand seven hundred and nine to one against. By a totally staggering coincidence that is also the”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The F-15 came out of the clouds on combat power, unleashing a trail of death and lead in its wastes!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts: Tertiary, Quandary & Quintessential Phases

“That isn’t to say that if you get involved in a paradox a few things won’t strike you as being very odd, but if you’ve got through life without that already happening to you, then I don’t know which Universe you’ve been living in, but it isn’t this one.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He had no idea what he was in for, but he knew that he hadn’t liked anything that had happened so far and didn’t think things were likely to change.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Fourteen hours later the sun sank hopelessly beneath the opposite horizon with a sense of totally wasted effort.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts

“Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. It had never heard of Salt Lake City, of course.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it’s prepared to put up with living. Anywhere it can get some kind of a grip, whether it’s the intoxicating seas of Santraginus V, where the fish never seem to care whatever the heck kind of direction they swim in, the fire storms of Frastra, where, they say, life begins at 40,000 degrees, or just burrowing around in the lower intestine of a rat for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, life will always find a way of hanging on in somewhere.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“St Cedd’s,” he pronounced, “the college of Coleridge, and the college of Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!” “The what?” said Richard. “The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity, and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a…” “Yes,” said Richard, “there was also the small matter of gravity.” “Gravity,” said Dirk with a slightly dismissive shrug, “yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in front of each of them.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story,” said Ford. “Eh?” “Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?” “Yes, of course I do.” “Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.” “Why not?” “Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.” “What are you talking about?” “Never mind, eat the fruit.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light, moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh.

There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience.

The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker’s forge making slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth.

Three knives altogether were required. First there was the knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there was the butter-spreading knife, which was a whippy little number but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little too whippy, but now the combination of flexibility with a core of strength was exactly right to achieve the maximum smoothness and grace of spread.

The chief amongst the knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife; it must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist on to the beautifully proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more dexterous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would be accomplished.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“People had such extraordinarily short memories, including him.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy