Quotes from Douglas Adams

It's like trying to explain to the Amazon River, the Mississippi, the Congo, and the Nile how the coming of the Atlantic Ocean will affect them. The first thing to understand is that river rules will no longer apply.

The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question How can we eat?, the second by the question Why do we eat?, and the third but the question Where shall we have lunch?

elegant gazelle-like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.

began to let his mind wander, trailing his fingers along the edge of an incomprehensible computer bank. He reached out and pressed an invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel lit up with the words Please do not press this button again.

You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool

he had had absolutely no cigarettes at all. Not one. They were out of his life, foresworn utterly. He didn't need them. He could do without them. They merely nagged at him like mad and made his life a living hell

Ten million years, Earthman . . . can you conceive of that kind of time span? A galactic civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time. Gone.' He paused.

There is no problem about changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. The

Lots of people are not in the business you think they're in. Xerox, for instance, is in the business of selling toner cartridges. All that mucking about they do developing high-tech copying and printing machines is just creating a commodity market in toner cartridges, which is where their profit lies. Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programmes to their audience, they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers.

I think it's even worse when you're in a situation where the object of your desire is being nice to you and liking you, but that's not enough, they've got to hate you or love you; anything in between is really upsetting and Arthur finds that very, very difficult. And

One of the things Ford Perfect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you've fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright?

She had what it took: great hair, a profound understanding of strategic lip gloss, the intelligence to understand the world and a tiny secret interior deadness which meant she didn't care. Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else in life becomes eerily easy. Tricia

it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

they're just a bunch of real sweet guys, you know, who just happen to want to kill everybody.

No voy a ser la marioneta de nadie, mucho menos, de mí mismo.

MacDuff I knew at Cambridge." "Oh, you did, did you? Describe him." "Tall. Tall and absurdly thin. And good-natured. A bit like a preying mantis that doesn't prey—a non-preying mantis if you like. A sort of pleasant genial mantis that's given up preying and taken up tennis instead.

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

My name," he said, "is Slartibartfast." Arthur

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.

They believe in "peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms".

SUSAN'S FLAT WAS small but spacious, which was a trick, reflected Richard tensely as he turned on the light, that only women seemed able to pull off.

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.

A bit like a preying mantis that doesn't prey—a non-preying mantis if you like.

who cursed and swore at him from a moral high ground that cyclists alone seem able to inhabit.