Quotes from Douglas Adams

The party blundered helplessly across the sky like a man leaning against an unexpectedly open door. It spun and wobbled on its hover jets. It tried to right itself and wronged itself instead.

As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological. Ford Prefect usually played to lose.

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss

You are disoriented. Blackness swims toward you like a school of eels who have just seen something that eels like a lot.

It seems to me that the whole field of humour could benefit from close and immediate scrutiny. Clearly we need to sort out the jokes which have any kind of genuine psychological value from those which merely encourage drug abuse and should be stopped.

Try and understand his problem," insisted Ford. "Here he is, poor lad, his entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships …" "And shouting," added the guard.

Ford, re?e. Aha? Šta ta riba radi u mome uhu? Prevodi ti. To je babilonska ribica. Potraži je u knjizi ako ho?eš. Dobacio mu je Vodi? kroz galaksiju za autostopere a onda se sklup?ao u fetalnu lopticu da se pripremi za skok. U tom trenutku, Arthurov um se raspao. O?i su mu se okrenule naopako. Noge su mu procurile kroz vrh glave. Prostorija oko njega se izravnala, obrnula, nestala i ostavila da kaplje u vlastiti pupak. Prolazili su kroz hipersvemir.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How

They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again.

Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression "it turns out" to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is.

You see, if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there aren't usually many vacancies for nonshouting and nonpushing-people-about officers, so I think I'd better stick to what I know.

I'd far rather be happy than right any day.' 'And are you?' 'No. That's where it all falls down, of course.

Er, well, um - there's one which is that a patient wakes up after having, well, that is, he's been to, er, to surgery, and he wakes up and, it's not very good, but anyway, he's been to surgery and he says to the doctor when he wakes up, 'Doctor, doctor, what's wrong with me, I can't feel my legs.' And the doctor says, `Yes, I'm afraid we've had to amputate both your arms.' And that's it really. Er, that's why he couldn't feel his legs, you see.

What's this switch?" he cried. "What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round. "No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all.

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression 'as pretty as an airport'.

And the messenger did understand the Reason, and he returned to his people in the Forest. But as he approached them, as he walked through the Forest and amongst the trees, he found that all he could remember of the Reason was how terribly clear the argument had seemed. What it actually was he couldn't remember at all.

A second later and they would have been dead." "Yeah, so if you'd taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit longer it would have gone away.

The sun was beginning to dry out the mud that Arthur lay in.

But listen," he shouted to the guard, "there's a whole world you don't know anything about … here, how about this?

What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

Not content with ignoring the normal requirements of biology, the cat was also in clear breach of the laws of physics.

The theology of this seemed a little confused, reflected Dirk, but what was one tiny extra droplet of misinformation in such a raging torrent?

Big, bulbous, ruddy buildings with vast ballrooms, grand, angular staircases, and as many turrets and crenellations as a recreational condom. The