Quotes from Douglas Adams

I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.

He was a man who was charged with the work he did in life because he was not one to ask questions - not so much on account of any natural quality of discretion as because he simply could never think of any questions to ask. ... On the strength of which he had guaranteed himself regular employment for as long as he cared to live.

Dirk Gently is the name under which I now trade. There are certain events in the past, I'm afraid, from which I would wish to disassociate myself. Absolutely, I know how you feel. Most of the fourteenth century, for instance, was pretty grim, agreed Reg earnestly.

On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which say three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying Wait.

And the most interesting natural structure? A giant, two-thousand-mile-long fish in orbit around Jupiter, according to a reliable report in the Weekly World News. The photograph was very convincing, and I'm only surprised that more-reputable journals like New Scientist, or even just The Sun, haven't followed up with more details. We should be told.

All right, said Ford. How would you react if I said that I'm not from Guildford at all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse? Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way. I don't know, he said, taking a pull of beer. Why, do you think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say? Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth bothering at the moment, what with the world being about to end.

She shook her head in puzzlement. '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.

In an infinite Universe anything can happen, said Ford, Even survival. Strange but true.

I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.

He didn't know why he had become president of the galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be.

Please call me Eddie if it will help you to relax.

The truth of the matter is, that most English people don't know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.

I live in what are known as hopes. I hope for fascinating and remunerative cases, my secretary hopes that I will pay her, her landlord hopes that she will produce some rent, the Electricity Board hopes that he will settle their bill, and so on. I find it a wonderfully optimistic way of life.

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating the obvious... At first Ford formed a theory to account for this human behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on excercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

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.

It's quicker, easier, and involves less licking

On the wall was a Duran Duran poster on which someone had scrawled in fat red felt tip, Take this down please. Beneath that another hand had scrawled, No. Beneath that again the first hand had written, I insist that you take it down. Beneath that the second hand had written, Won't! Beneath that - You're fired. Beneath that - Good! And there the matter appeared to have rested.

In Santa Barbara they stopped at a fish restaurant in what seemed to be a converted warehouse. Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious. Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her. Why's this fish so bloody good? he demanded, angrily. Please excuse my friend, said Fenchurch to the startled waitress. I think he's having a nice day at last.

You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.

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

He had a nasty feeling that that might be an idiotic thing to do, but he did it anyway, and sure enough it had turned out to be an idiotic thing to do. You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.

The Universe, the whole infinite Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small.

She thought that trying to live life according to any plan you actually work out is like trying to buy ingredients for a recipe from the supermarket. You get one of those trolleys which simply will not go in the direction you push it and end up just having to buy completely different stuff. What do you do with it? What do you do with the recipe? She didn't know.