Quotes from Douglas Adams

The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, thought you know that it probably will not be.

Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.

He's spending a year dead for tax reasons.

He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.

Hey, this is terrific! he 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?

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.

There was a terribly ghastly silence. There was a terribly ghastly noise. There was a terribly ghastly silence.

The little waiter's eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion.

We're not obsessed by anything, you see, insisted Ford. ... And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win. I care about lots of things, said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty. Such as? Well, said the old man, life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords. Would you die for them? Fjords? blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. No. Well then. Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, Hang the sense of it, and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.

Dirk turned on the car wipers, which grumbled because they didn't have quite enough rain to wipe away, so he turned them off again. Rain quickly speckled the windscreen. He turned on the wipers again, but they still refused to feel that the exercise was worthwhile, and scraped and squeaked in protest.

Zaphod Beeblebrox crawled bravely along a tunnel, like the hell of a guy he was. He was very confused, but he continued crawling doggedly anyway because he was that brave.

High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse.

Ford looked at him severely. And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house whilst he's away, alright? he said. The mere thought, growled Mr Prosser, hadn't even begun to speculate, he continued, settling himself back, about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he felt bad about feeling good about it. Then he felt good about feeling bad about feeling good about it and satisfied, drove on into the night.

He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.

A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason. This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.

Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.

The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill as ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics- as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.

You know," said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was." "No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.

Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.

For as long as he could remember, he'd suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.

Fiordland, a vast tract of mountainous terrain that occupies the south-west corner of South Island, New Zealand, is one of the most astounding pieces of land anywhere on God's earth, and one's first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause.