Douglas Adams > Quotes

“Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single statement took the scientific world by storm. It completely revolutionized it. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure and the science of math was put back by years. Slowly,”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“First you had to fight the Stones fans, which was tricky because they fought dirty and had their knuckles nearer the ground.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“We will go to Asgard . . . now,” he said. At that moment he raised his hand as if to pluck an apple, but instead of plucking he made a tiny, sharp turning movement. The effect was as if he had twisted the entire world through a billionth part of a billionth part of a degree. Everything shifted, was for a moment minutely out of focus, and then snapped back again as a suddenly different world. This world was a much darker one and colder still.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“People think that if you just say 'hallucinations' it explains anything you want it to explain and eventually whatever it is you can't understand will just go away. It's just a word, it doesn't explain anything. It doesn't explain why the dolphins disappeared.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.” ‘“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.” ‘“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. ‘“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“She carried it through to him and asked if he felt like talking things through.

"Zark off," said Zaphod.

Trillian nodded patiently to herself, counted to an even higher number, tossed the tray lightly aside, walked to the transport room and just teleported herself the hell out of his life.

She didn't even programme any coordinates, she hadn't the faintest idea where she was going, she just went — a random row of dots flowing through the Universe.

"Anything," she said to herself as she left, "is better than this.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. “Hello, yes? Yes, that’s right. Yes. You’ll ’ave to speak up, there’s an awful lot of noise in ’ere. What? “No, I only do the bar in the evenings. It’s Yvonne who does lunch, and Jim he’s the landlord. No, I wasn’t on. What? “You’ll have to speak up. “What? No, don’t know nothing about no raffle. What? “No, don’t know nothing about it. ’Old on, I’ll call Jim.” The barmaid put her hand over the receiver and called over the noisy bar. “ ’Ere, Jim, bloke on the phone says something about he’s won a raffle. He keeps on saying it’s ticket 37 and he’s won.” “No, there was a guy in the pub here won,” shouted back the barman. “He says ’ave we got the ticket.” “Well, how can he think he’s won if he hasn’t even got a ticket?” “Jim says ’ow can you think you’ve won if you ’aven’t even got the ticket. What?” She put her hand over the receiver again. “Jim, ’e keeps effing at me. Says there’s a number on the ticket.” “ ’Course there was a number on the ticket, it was a bloody raffle ticket, wasn’t it?” “ ’E says ’e means it’s a telephone number on the ticket.” “Put the phone down and serve the bloody customers, will you?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“She was tallish with dark hair which fell in waves around a pale and serious face. Standing still, alone, she seemed almost somber, like a statue to some important but unpopular virtue in a formal garden. She seemed to be looking at something other than what she looked as if she was looking at.

But when she smiled, as she did now, suddenly, it was as if she had just arrived from somewhere. Warmth and life flooded into her face, and impossibly graceful movement into her body. The effect was very disconcerting, and it disconcerted the Arthur like hell.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“Marvin'in göğsünün derinliklerindeki dişliler gıcırdadı. "Komik," dedi cenaze törenlerine çok uygun bir sesle, "tam hayat daha kötü olamaz derken birden her şey nasıl da daha kötüye gidiyor.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“dried-out marsh, now barren of all vegetation and covered with a layer of dust about an inch thick. It was very cold. Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it. He stalked off by himself and was soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the ground. The wind stung Arthur’s eyes and ears, and the stale thin air clasped his throat. However, the thing that was stung most was his mind. “It’s fantastic …” he said, and his own voice rattled his ears. Sound carried badly in this thin atmosphere.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“SONSÖZ " Hayat, evren ve her şey”
― Douglas Adams, Guide to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“no correspondence is intended between any institutions or characters in this book and any real institutions or people living, dead, or wandering the night in ghostly torment.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Well, I wouldn’t overstress that angle, you know,’ he said finally, ‘one’s never alone with a rubber duck.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“The room was much as Slartibartfast had described it. In seven and a half million years it had been well looked after and cleaned regularly every century or so. The ultramahogany desk was worn at the edges, the carpet a little faded now, but the large computer terminal sat in sparkling glory on the desk’s leather top, as bright as if it had been constructed yesterday.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’ ‘Why, what did she tell you?’ ‘I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Bir BBS dedi, bizim göremediğimiz veya görmediğimiz ya da beynimizin görmemize izin vermediği bir şeydir, çünkü onun başka birinin sorunu olduğunu düşünürüz. İşte BBS'nin anlamı budur. Başka Birinin Sorunu. Beyin onu hemen yok eder, o adeta kör bir noktadır. Eğer ona doğrudan bakarsan, tam olarak ne olduğunu bilmediğin sürece hiçbir şey göremezsin. Tek şansın göz ucuyla onu gafil avlamaktır.”
― Douglas Adams

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I decided to call him Ford Prefect. (This was a joke that missed American audiences entirely, of course, since they had never heard of the rather oddly named little car, and many thought it was a typing error for Perfect.) I explained in the text that the minimal research my alien character had done before arriving on this planet had led him to think that this name would be “nicely inconspicuous.” He had simply mistaken the dominant life form.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Funny", he intoned funerally, "how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep.
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Mr L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I don’t go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterward in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterward for hours to my girlfriend!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“En ese caso debemos estar locos. - No es mal día para estarlo.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

“One, a young man, was tall, thin and angular; even muffled inside a heavy dark coat he walked a little like an affronted heron. 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

“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

“If such a thing is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite
improbability.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Na Terra (...) o problema eram os carros. As desvantagens envolvidas em arrancar toneladas de gosma preta e viscosa do subsolo, onde a tal gosma tinha ficado escondida em segurança e longe de todo mal, transformá-la em piche para cobrir o chão, fumaça para infestar o ar e espalhar o resto pelo mar, tudo isso parecia anular as aparentes vantagens de se poder viajar mais rápido de um lugar para outro. Especialmente quando o lugar a que se chegava tinha ficado, por conta dessa coisa toda, muito parecido com o lugar de que se tinha saído, ou seja, coberto de piche, cheio de fumaça e com poucos peixes.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the end of the universe