Douglas Adams > Quotes

“You’re a jerk,” repeated the alien, “a complete kneebiter.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I can only think that the business with the apple must have upset him more than I realised.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought. “Tell us!” “All right,” said Deep Thought. “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 Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Aynen öyle," dedi Zaphod, pek çok insanı yumuşak duvarlı bir odaya kilitletecek türden bir sırıtışla.”
― Douglas Adams

“A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.’” “GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What’s that?” “Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What did she say?” “She hit me on the head with the rock again.” “I think I can confirm that that was my daughter.” “Sweet kid.” “You have to get to know her,” said Arthur. “She eases up, does she?” “No,” said Arthur, “but you get a better sense of when to duck.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You’re very strange,” she said. “No, I’m very ordinary,” said Arthur, “but some very strange things have happened to me. You could say I’m more differed from than differing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Of course, the computer isn’t any of these things. These are all things we were previously familiar with from the real world, which we have modelled in the computer so that we can use the damn thing. Which should tell us something interesting. The computer is actually a modelling device.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“What? Excuse me? “La, a note to follow so . . .” What kind of lame excuse for a line is that? Well, it’s obvious what kind of line it is. It’s a placeholder.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric, but a harmless one—an unruly boozer with some oddish habits. For instance, he would often gate-crash university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any astrophysicists he could find till he got thrown out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There was a terrible ghastly silence. There was a terrible ghastly noise. There was a terrible ghastly silence.”
― 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’.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul

“Life,’ said Marvin, ‘don’t talk to me about life.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“Stanley wasn’t a good downpour. Nothing wrong with a good downpour for clearing the air. Stanley was the sort of thing you needed a good downpour to clear the air of. Stanley was muggy, close, and oppressive, like someone large and sweaty pressed up against you in a tube train. Stanley didn’t rain, but every so often he dribbled on you. Dirk”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“and made what an outside observer would have thought was a heroic effort to cross the room.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father. Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term “Future Perfect” has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valor, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet. The”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.’ ‘What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?’ ‘You ask a glass of water.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Oh, all right,' said the old man. 'Here's a prayer for you. Got a pencil?'
'Yes,' said Arthur.
'It goes like this. Let's see now: Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. That's it. It's what you pray silently inside yourself anyway, so you may as well have it out in the open.'
'Hmmm,' said Arthur. "Well, thank you -'
'There's another prayer that goes with it that's very important,' continued the old man, 'so you'd better jot this down, too.'
'Okay.'
'It goes: Lord, lord, lord... It's best to put that bit in, just in case. You can never be too sure. Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen. And that's it. Most of the trouble people get into in life comes from leaving out that last part.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“was simply this (it needed to be simple; the afternoon was too far advanced for complicated rules): someone would say the name of a town and somebody else would say what the word meant. You had to be there. We rapidly discovered that there were an awful lot of experiences, ideas, and situations that everybody knew and recognized, but that never got properly identified simply because there wasn’t a word for them. They were all of the “Do you ever have the situation where . . . ,” or “You know what feeling you get when . . . ,” or “You know, I always thought it was just me . . .” kind. All it needs is a word, and the thing is identified. So,”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Can’t take it, huh?” said the man. Without the slightest movement he was now back, sitting cross-legged, on top of the pole forty feet in front of Arthur. “You come to me for advice, but you can’t cope with anything you don’t recognize. Hmmm. So we’ll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh? Well, business as usual, I suppose.” He sighed and squinted mournfully into the distance.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defense system will result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a mouse cage, the bruising of somebody’s upper arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale. In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustains the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If there was one thing life had taught her it was that there are times when you do not go back for your bag and times when you do. It had yet to teach her to distinguish between the two types of occasion.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“More than you can possibly imagine," dreaded Marvin. "My capacity for mental activity of all kinds is as boundless as the infinite reaches of space itself. Except of course for my capacity for happiness." Stomp, stomp, he went. "My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Kimsenin kuklası olmayacağım,özellikle de kendimin.”
― Douglas Adams, By Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Box set

“Cela faisait un maintenant trente secondes qu'Arthur essayait, sans succès de dire "Où avez-vous trouvé ça ?" d'un ton brusque et légèrement interloqué.
Finalement, l'instant se présenta mais il le rata d'une milliseconde.
"Où avez-vous trouvez ça ?" dit Fenchurch d'un ton brusque et légèrement interloqué.
Arthur jeta sur Fenchurch un regarde brusque et légèrement interloqué et lança "Quoi ? Tu as déjà vu des trucs comme ça ?
-Oui. J'en ai un. Ou plutôt, j'en ai eu un. Russell me l'a piqué pour y mettre ses balles de golf. Je ne sais pas d'où il venait , ce que je sais, c'est que j'étais en rogne après Russell pour me l'avoir piqué. Pourquoi, tu en as un, toi aussi ?
-Oui, il était..."
Ils se rendirent compte l'un et l'autre que le regard de Wonko le Sain passait brusquement de l'un à l'autre, tout en essayant dans l'intervalle de paraître interloqué.
"Vous aussi, vous en avez un ?”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

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