Douglas Adams

Writer

1952-03-11 – 2001-01-01

Quotes by Douglas Adams

• One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it's prepared to put up with living.

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• We have a saying up here. —Life is wasted on the living.

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• I certainly don't like the idea of missionaries. In fact, the whole business fills me with fear and alarm. I don't believe in God, or at least not in the one we've invented for ourselves in England to fulfill our peculiarly English needs, and certainly not in the ones they've invented in America, who supply their servants with toupees, television stations, and, most important, toll-free telephone numbers. I wish that people who did believe in such things would keep them to themselves and not export them to the developing world.

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• Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do.The sign read:Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.It seemed to me, said Wonko the Sane, that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.

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• A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.

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• There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.

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• Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.

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• We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.

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

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• An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance.

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• 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.

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• Rather than arriving five hours late and flustered, it would be better all around if he were to arrive five hours and a few extra minutes late, but triumphantly in command.

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• The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other because neither of them was currently a particular engaging sight, nor had they been since he had made the error of looking into his soul.It had indeed been an error.It had been late one night-- of course.It had been a difficult day-- of course.There had been soulful music playing on the ship's sound system-- of course.And he had, of course, been slightly drunk.In other words, all the usual conditions that bring on a bout of soul searching had applied, but it had, nevertheless, clearly been an error.

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• Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.

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• He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers for the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones until it now said something it had never said to him before, which was yes.

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• There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.

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• Mr. Beeblebrox, sir,' said the insect in awed wonder, 'you're so weird you should be in movies.;'Yeah,' said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink wing, 'and you, baby, should be in real life.' The insect paused for a moment

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• ...just because you see something, it doesn't mean to say it's there. And if you don't see something, it doesn't mean to say it's not there. It's only what your senses bring to your attention.

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• Reality is frequently inaccurate.

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• Such music, he said. I'm not religious, but if I were I would say it was like a glimpse into the mind of God. Perhaps it was and i ought to be religious. I have to keep reminding myself that they didn't create the music, they only created the instrument which could read the score. And the score was life itself. And it's all up there.

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