Douglas Adams > Quotes

“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

“First we have to call it something which says it's our, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not what you said it is, but something we say it is.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn’t got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Presumably he would know what the Question to the Ultimate Answer is. It’s always bothered me that we never found out.” “Think of a number,” said the computer, “any number.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“So it seems to me that midnight on December 31 is the only solid and reliable point we have in the entire sorry mess, and so perhaps we should be celebrating that just a little bit. And instead of saying that we have got the end of the millennium (or bi-millennium) wrong, we should say that our ancestors got the beginning of it wrong, and that we’ve only just sorted the mess out before starting a new mess of our own. What the hell does it matter anyway? It’s just an excuse for a party.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Esa muchacha es una de las formas de vida orgánica menos sumida en la ignorancia y menos torpe que he tenido la profunda falta de placer de no ser capaz de evitar conocer”
― Douglas Adams

“He hoped and prayed there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here, and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Look,” said Arthur, “would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?” For”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“One of the joys of true happiness,’ trilled the robot, ‘is sharing. I brim, I froth, I overflow with . . .”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search of something to connect with.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

“It wasn’t infinity, in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity – distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read “Go stick your head in a pig,” and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It meant that the silently waged conflict between himself and his cleaning lady had escalated to a new and more frightening level. It was now, Dirk reckoned, fully three months since this fridge door had been opened, and each of them was grimly determined not to be the one to open it first.”
― 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

“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, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish