Douglas Adams Quotes

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
-- Douglas Adams

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea ...
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

* Anything that happens, happens.
* Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
* Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
* It doesn't necessarily happen in chronological order though.
- Douglas Adams

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
-Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

In case of major discrepancy, it's always reality that's got it wrong.
~Douglas Adams

"`You'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk.'
`What's so unpleasant about being drunk?'
`Go ask a glass of water.'"
-- Arthur getting ready for his first jump into hyperspace.

"`You know,' said Arthur, `it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from asphyxiation in deep space 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.'"

"`Hey this is terrific!' Zaphod said. `Someone down there is trying to kill us!'
`Terrific,' said Arthur.
`But don't you see what this means?'
`Yes. We are going to die.'
`Yes, but apart from that.'
`APART from that?'
`It means we must be on to something!'
`How soon can we get off it?'"
-- Zaphod and Arthur in a certain death situation over Magrathea.

"`Maybe somebody here tipped off the Galactic Police,' said Trillian. `Everybody saw you come in.'
`You mean they want to arrest me over the phone?' said Zaphod, `Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered.'
`Yeah,' said a voice from under the table [Ford's now completely rat- arsed at this point], `you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.'"
-- Zaphod getting paranoid over a phone call.

"His eyes seemed to be popping out of his head. He wasn't certain if this was because they were trying to see more clearly, or if they simply wanted to leave at this point."
-- Arthur trying to see who had diverted him from going to a party.

"Arthur yawed wildly as his skin tried to jump one way and his skeleton the other, whilst his brain tried to work out which of his ears it most wanted to crawl out of.
`Bet you weren't expecting to see me again,' said the monster, which Arthur couldn't help thinking was a strange remark for it to make, seeing as he had never met the creature before. He could tell that he hadn't met the creature before from the simple fact that he was able to sleep at nights."
-- Arthur discovering who had diverted him from going to a party.

"He believed in a door. He must find that door. The door was the way to... to...
The Door was The Way.
Good.
Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to."
-- The Electric Monk discovering the reason why there are so many acronyms in computing.

"Richard was looking at the bird as if it was the most extraordinary thing he had ever seen in his life, and the bird was looking at Richard as if defying him to find its beak even remotely funny."
-- Richard encounters some historical rain forest wildlife.

"The beak was a major piece of armoury. It was a beak that would frighten any animal on earth, even one that was already dead and in a tin."
-- Dirk encounters the eagle/fighter plane on his own doorstep.

"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

"I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"

"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.

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford. "Very depressed." "What's up?" "I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin

The technology involved in making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand million, nine hundred and ninety- nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety- nine times out of a billion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and do without it.

Since this Galaxy began, vast civilisations have risen and fallen, risen and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that life in the Galaxy must be (a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick, history sick or some such thing, and (b) stupid.

Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

It wasn't his job to worry about that, though. It was his job to do his job, which was to do his job. If that led to a certain narrowness of vision and circularity of thought then it wasn't his job to worry about such things.

The main town was called OhWell. There weren't any other towns to speak of. Settlement on NowWhat had not been a success and the sort of people who actually wanted to live on NowWhat were not the sort of people you would want to spend time with.

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.