Quotes from Douglas Adams

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.

Indeed, Bill, it is. You find me thriving. And Mrs Roberts? How is she? Foot still troubling her?" "Not since she had it off, thanks for asking, sir. Between you and me, sir, I would've been just as happy to have had her amputated and kept the foot. I had a little spot reserved on the mantelpiece, but there we are, we have to take things as we find them.

You are, without doubt, holding in your hands one of the best-introduced books in the English language. We hope you enjoy the Introduction to the New Edition that follows this Introduction to it and continue to read on even into the book itself.

Non è sufficiente credere alla bellezza di un giardino? Che bisogno c'è di credere che nasconda delle fate?

Just says prepaid ticket for Mr. Dirk Gently to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be collected. Were you not expecting to go to Albuquerque today, sir?" "I was expecting to end up somewhere I didn't expect, I just wasn't expecting it to be Albuquerque, that's all." "Sounds like it's an excellent destination for you, Mr. Gently. Enjoy your flight.

Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.

We started to collect more and more of these words and concepts, and began to realize what an arbitrarily selective work the Oxford English Dictionary is. It simply doesn't recognize huge wodges of human experience.

The daylight shouldered its way in like a squad of policemen and did a lot of what's-all-thising around the room

Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.

Time is an illusion. Lunch-time doubly so.

It appeared then to be at least partially satisfied. Whereas before it had been a cross dodo, it was at least now a cross, fed dodo, which was probably about as much as it could hope for in this life.

Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase "too much Mozart" was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favor of any given program-scheduling strategy.

He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them.

Asking people about their opinions is a very good way of making friends. Telling them about your own opinions can also work, but not always quite as well. Nowadays

Dirk nearly exploded with pain and howled so loudly that he almost attracted the attention of a waiter.

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem. Please relax. You will be sent for soon.

Fuck 'em," said Ford, slumping on the bed. "You can't care about every damn thing.

This, she reflected, in a continuation of her earlier train of thought, was presumably how religions got started, and must be the reason why so many sects hang around airports looking for converts. They know that people there are at their most vulnerable and perplexed, and ready to accept any kind of guidance.

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.

Try and make yourself comfortable on the sofa," invited Reg, fussing around hospitably. "I don't know if you'll manage it. It always feels to me as if it's been stuffed with cabbage leaves and cutlery.

What I lost, I think, was a whole other life. Everybody does that. Every moment of every day. Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don't notice. Some we do. Sounds like you noticed one.

He gestured Arthur toward a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. "It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus