Quotes from Douglas Adams

He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.

We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.

Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting Gotcha. It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.' 'Why not?' 'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.

Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.

Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is. (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.

Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying Blood...blood...blood...blood...

I like the cover, he said. Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.

People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.

What's up? [asked Ford.] I don't know, said Marvin, I've never been there.

Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else becomes eerily easy.

Can't stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I'll tell them what to do. Don't get bitten in the first place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland)

That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.

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.

It was his subconscious which told him this---that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.

There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.

Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off.

Ballycumber (ba-li-KUM-ber) n. One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.

I don't go to mythical places with strange men.

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 of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself. Hang on, can I write this down? said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.