The Douglas Adams memorial thread: Post your favorite quotes here!

[minty_green]

In honor of Douglas Adams passing away (dammit!), I thought this might be cool to remember the guy by starting a thread full of his best quotes. As I posted over in Lsura’s MPSIMS thread, my favorite is still the beginning of (I think) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move.

But there are so many more, and here’s your chance to post them all.
minty green
Proud owner of a personally-inscribed copy of Mostly Harmless

[Verrain]

“Impossbile? Heh, that means it will take 42 seconds!” The Pirate Planet, Doctor Who.

[Lsura]

Mine is from the Hitchhiker’s guide:

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. “I never could get the hang of Thursdays”

It sums up my experience with Thursdays pretty well.

[MEBuckner]

Jesus, minty, there are just so damned many of them…

(I’m having to edit all of these; I could just go on for pages and pages.)

The room was not a room to elevate the soul. Louis XIV, to pick a name at random, would not have liked it, would have found it not sunny enough, and insufficiently full of mirrors. He would have desired someone to pick up the socks, put the records away, and maybe burn the place down. Michelangelo would have been distressed by its proportions, which were neither lofty nor shaped by any noticeable inner harmony or symmetry, other than that all parts of the room were pretty much equally full of old coffee mugs, shoes and brimming ashtrays, most of which were now sharing their tasks with each other. The walls were painted in almost precisely that shade of green which Raffaello Sanzio would have bitten off his own right hand at the wrist rather than use, and Hercules, on seeing the room, would probably have returned half an hour later armed with a navigable river. It was, in short, a dump… – The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, chapter 3

Michael usually referred to his mother as an old battle-ax, but if she was fairly to be compared to a battle-ax it would only be to an exquisitely crafted, beautifully balanced battle-ax, with an elegant minimum of fine engraving which stopped just short of its gleaming razored edge. One swipe from such an instrument and you wouldn’t even know you’d been hit until you tried to look at your watch a bit later and discovered that your arm wasn’t on. – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, chapter 14

Damn. Damn. Damn. Belgium!

[Orbifold]

“I’m going to kill you anyway! Even if it’s a logical impossibility I’m going to zarking well try!!!” (From Life, the Universe, and Everything I believe…)

And of course, “They hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”

Belgium indeed.

[Rilchiam]

“It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”

“You ask a glass of water.”

Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl gargle gargle howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh should have a good time. Message repeats.

“We could program it to say What? and I don’t understand and Where’s the tea?, and no one would know the difference.”

And ironically, “Life. Don’t talk to me about life.”

[headchecked]

This is in the intro before “The Restaurant at the end of the Universe”

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another which states that this has already happened."

And from what I’ve heard, Douglas Adams is an atheist, but where ever he is, rest in peace.

[scratch1300]

“You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?”
“Yeah, but don’t shout it out or they’ll all want one.”
“The Zaphod Beeblebrox?”
“No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn’t you hear I come in six packs?”

[Cervaise]

My favorite quote cannot be posted, because it is the entirety of Last Chance to See – cover to cover, every last single word. There’s no way to single out a sentence or paragraph; I value that book as a complete and perfect whole.

Marvin the Paranoid Android’s words are appropriate here: “I think you ought to know, I’m feeling very depressed.”

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

“this must be some usage of the word ‘safe’ with which I wasn’t previously familiar”

Dent to Ford, ‘safe’ inside the bay of the Vogon Constructor fleet ship

[greengreek]

“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.” - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

[The_Asbestos_Mango]

It was my sig line for a while-

Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it.

Kind of says it all.

I think I’ll go back to it.

[domina]

I don’t have the books handy, but there are certain phrases that have worked their way into my everyday vocabulary:

“excitingly chunky”

“Somebody Else’s Problem Field”

“a liquid almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea”

“Thank you for making a simple door very happy!”

[Atreyu]

Farewell, Douglas Adams. He made many people happy with your books, and I’m glad that I could count myself as one of those happy readers since the age of 13.

The quotes that first came to mind when I saw the OP have already been listed. But here’s an exchange from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that I’ve always liked:

“Drinks!” said Zaphod. “That was it! See what you miss if you don’t stay alert.”

“Indeed, sir,” said the waiter patiently. “If the lady and the gentlemen would care to take drinks before dinner…”

“Dinner!” Zaphod exclaimed with passion. “Listen, little green person, my stomach could take you home and cuddle you all night for the mere idea.”

“…and the Universe,” continued the waiter, determined not to be deflected on his home stretch, “will explode later for your pleasure.”

Ford’s head swiveled slowly toward him. He spoke with feeling.

“Wow,” he said, “what sort of drinks do you serve in this place?”

And the whole chapter in Life, the Universe, and Everything about Arthur’s encounter with Agrajag in the Cathedral of Hate (“It was the product of a mind that was not merely twisted, but actually sprained”) never fails to crack me up.

[Monstre]

“It’s Marvin. He just called to wash his head at us…”

[Journeyman]

I discovered the Hitchhiker’s Guide at the age of twelve, and the series remains one of my favorites. Somehow, the world seems a little dimmer without it’s author. His work lighted and lightened the lives of thousands, and he will be sorely missed.

If I posted even a small fraction of the quotes I love from these books, I’d get a stern reprimand from the mods, so I’m just going to open my copy of the More That Complete Guide and thumb through it.

does so

“Let’s be blunt, it’s a nasty game’ (says *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy *), 'but then anyone who has been to the higher dimensions will know that they’re a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right angles to reality.”

I won’t write the whole thing down, but Arthur’s encounter with Agrajag never fails to make me laugh.

“Extremely rickety’ was one phrase that spang to mind and ‘Please may I get out?’ was another.”

“There is an art, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

“People who talk to themselves on the phone,’ said Ford, 'never learn anything to their advantage.”

The Someone Else’s Problem Field is a favorite of mine.

"You’re not going to like it,’ observed Deep Thought.
‘Tell us!’
‘All right,’ said Deep Thought. ‘The Answer to the Great Question…’
‘Yes…!’
‘Of Life, The Universe, and Everything…’ said Deep Thought.
‘Yes…!’
‘Is…’ said Deep Thought, and paused.
‘Yes…!’
‘Is…’
‘Yes…!!!..?’
‘Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought, with infinite magesty and calm.

It was a long time before anyone spoke. Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside.
‘We’re going to get lynched, aren’t we?’ he whispered."

[Freudian_Slit]

“'Now,” said Benjy mouse, ‘to business.’
Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.
‘To business!’ they said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Benjy.
Ford looked around.
‘Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast.’"

Anything with the mice cracks me up.

And of course, the first one quoted…about the universe making people angry.

[rowrrbazzle]

So long, Mr. Adams, and thanks for all the fish.

[Welfy]

If I recall correctly, one of my favorite lines was also this sig line.

But I could be wrong.

[Amedeus]

---

(Whale pops into existance, falls)[snip]
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly comming toward me very fast? Very, very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide-sounding name like…ow…ound…round… ground! That’s it! Thats a good name-ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

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