Douglas Adams > Quotes

“That done, we could finally relax about the baggage and start seriously to worry about the state of the plane, which was terrifying. The door to the cockpit remained open for the duration of the flight and might actually have been missing entirely. Mark told me that Air Merpati bought their planes second-hand from Air Uganda, but I think he was joking. I have a cheerfully reckless view of this kind of air travel. It rarely bothers me at all. I don’t think this is bravery, because I am frequently scared stiff in cars, particularly if I’m driving. But once you’re in an airplane, everything is completely out of your hands, so you may as well just sit back and grin manically about the grinding and rattling noises the old wreck of a plane makes as the turbulence throws it around the sky. There’s nothing you can do.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“​​I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was really particularly effective. Interesting rhythmic devices too, which seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the humanity of the author's compassionate soul, which contrives through the medium of the prose structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other, and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into whatever it was the book was about.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Many had seen it as clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas.”
― Douglas Adams

“Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the bagpipes, increasing the Captain’s already considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop. That was something he looked forward to as well.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The Answer to the Great Question . . .” “Yes . . . !” “Of Life, the Universe and Everything . . .” said Deep Thought. “Yes . . . !” “Is . . .” said Deep Thought, and paused. “Yes . . . !” “Is . . .” “Yes . . . !!! . . . ?” “Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What are you, crazy?’ ‘It’s a possibility I haven’t ruled out yet,’ said Zaphod quietly. ‘I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Think of a number, any number.” “Er, five,” said the mattress. “Wrong,” said Marvin. “You see?” The”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
"Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”
― Douglas Adams

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. 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

“It wasn’t that she wanted to be difficult, as such, it was just that she didn’t know how or what else to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“watching the very last glimmers of light sink into blackness behind the horizon.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Sen iyi misin?" dedi çocuk.
"Hayır," dedi Arthur.
"Peki, sakalında neden bir kemik var?" dedi çocuk.
Onu, koyduğum yeri sevmesi için eğitiyorum.”
― Douglas Adams

“it must be said, some success. For instance, he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out-of-work actor, which was plausible enough.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons,”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival,Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. “For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?” He”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Trempé jusqu'aux os, il restait interdit sur le bas-côté de la route, lorsqu'un nouvel éclair déchira le ciel et l'illumina, lui laissant une fraction de seconde pour déchiffrer le message inscrit sur l'autocollant fixé à l'arrière de la machine avant que celle-ci ne disparaisse.
Il en resta bouche bée, n'en croyant pas ses yeux.
Il venait de lire : "Mon autre voiture est aussi une Porsche.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“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. Come on, let’s get zappy.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“Well, I was in fact, I was moving backward in time. Hmmm. Well, I think we’ve sorted all that out now. If you’d like to know, I can tell you that in your universe you move freely in three dimensions that you call space. You move in a straight line in a fourth, which you call time, and stay rooted to one place in a fifth, which is the first fundamental of probability. After that it gets a bit complicated, and there’s all sorts of stuff going on in dimensions thirteen to twenty-two that you really wouldn’t want to know about. All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place. I can easily not say words like ‘damn’ if it offends you.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Listen!” said Roosta urgently. “You can kill a man, destroy his body, break his spirit, but only the Total Perspective Vortex can annihilate a man’s soul! The treatment lasts seconds, but the effects last the rest of your life!”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“How to Leave the Planet 1. Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713) 483-3111. Explain that it’s very important that you get away as soon as possible. 2. If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may have in the White House—(202) 456-1414—to have a word on your behalf with the guys at NASA. 3. If you don’t have any friends in the White House, phone the Kremlin (ask the overseas operator for 0107-095-295-9051). They don’t have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of), but they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well try. 4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone number is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible. 5. If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that it’s vitally important you get away before your phone bill arrives. Douglas”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Yes. I much prefer it here. So much less reputable, so much more fraught.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“here’s something to occupy you and keep your mind off things.’ ‘It won’t work,’ droned Marvin, ‘I have an exceptionally large mind.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“A team of seven three-foot-high market analysts fell out of it and died, partly of asphyxiation, partly of surprise. Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it too, materializing in a large wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system. The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“But nowadays everybody’s a comedian, even the weather girls and continuity announcers. We laugh at everything. Not intelligently anymore, not with sudden shock, astonishment, or revelation, just relentlessly and meaninglessly. No more rain showers in the desert, just mud and drizzle everywhere, occasionally illuminated by the flash of paparazzi.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“(who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health hazard, and how much they should get paid if he did)”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy