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

[TPWombat]

The official song of the complaints division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation :

Share and enjoy, share and enjoy
Journey though life with a plastic boy
Or girl by your side, let your pal be your guide,
And when it breaks down or starts to annoy
Sprays oil on your floor or rips off your door
And you get to the point you can’t take any more
Bring it to us we won’t give a fig
We’ll tell you…
…Go stick your head in a pig.
Was that prescient or what???

[Greg_Charles]

Ford trying to BS the Vogon guard out of throwing them out the airlock:

"Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?" he asked suddenly.
The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly over his face.
"Enjoy?" he boomed. "What do you mean?"
"What I mean," said Ford, "is does it give you a full, satisfying life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships ..."
The Vogon stared up at the low ceiling and his eyebrows almost rolled over each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he said, "Well, the hours are good ..."

I was enjoying the book till then, but that got me giggling uncontrollably, and turned me into the rabid fan I remain today. Goodbye Mr. Adams, we’ll miss you!

[TPWombat]

Why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal?

I don’t know, why is it?

<sigh>
I don’t know either. Wretched, isn’t it?

[Mr.Cynical]

She is the least beknightedly unintelligent creature it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to have avoided meeting. - Marvin
“Oooh, er,” muttered the machine in alarm, “something pretty damn devestating, I should expect!” - the Tank
“All right,” said the man kindly, “you can sing to my cat if you like.” - The Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

" " - HotBlack Desiato

“From somewhere at the back of the crowd, a single voice started to sing a tune that would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.” -Douglas as the narrator

“Arthur realized as he fell, giddily and sickeningly, that if he was going to hang around in the sky believing everything that the Italians had to say about physics when they couldn’t even keep a simple tower straight, that they were in big trouble, and damn well did fall faster than Fenchurch.” Again, the narrator.

There are far too many. I didn’t even have to get into the fifth book, Mostly Harmless.

[Some_Guy]

`Well, perhaps we’re both going mad.’’

Yes,'' said Arthur, we’d be mad, all things considered, to think this was Southend.’’

``Well, do you think this is Southend?’’

``Oh yes.’’

``So do I.’’

``Therefore we must be mad.’’

``Nice day for it.’’

``Yes,’’ said a passing maniac.

``Who was that?’’ asked Arthur

``Who — the man with the five heads and the elderberry bush full of kippers?’’

``Yes.’’

``I don’t know. Just someone.’’

``Ah.’’

This just about where I knew I was hooked.

[Slartibartfastt]

Belgium

[dodge_this]

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.' Very deep,’ said Arthur, `you should send that in to the “Reader’s Digest”. They’ve got a page for people like you.’”

“`Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that “job satisfaction”? ‘Cos I don’t.’”

“`If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.’”

and of course…“Don’t Panic” which has been my motto for nearly two decades now.

[curiousgeorgeordeadcat]

“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.”

[betenoir]

Fuck. Joey Ramone and now Douglas Adams. What a lousy spring.

There’s way too many quotes so I’ll just say if I now know where my towel is, I have him to thank.

Now. Let us all raise our Pan-Galatic Gargleblasters in tribute…

[cmkeller]

Shoot. And to think that Totally Harmless is the last thing he leaves us with.

On prehistoric Earth:

Ford Prefect: “How could you not invent the wheel? It’s the single simplest machine in existence?”
Market Analyst (I think): “Okay, mister smarty-pants, if you know so much, then what color should it be?”
Hairdresser: “Well, we were supposed to create fire, but all they gave us was these two sticks, so…curling tongs!..Well, they didn’t exactly give us enough detail on this fire-thing, you know.”
Ford: “Ah, stick it up your nose!”
Hairdresser: “Exactly. Do people want fire that can be nasally inserted?”
“Ever since adopting the leaf as our unit of currency, we’ve all become extremely rich, leading to enormous inflation. So to solve that problem, I recommend…burning down all the trees!”

And let’s not forget my signature line, actually an amalgam of two lines from the Dirk Gently books…

[Billy_Rubin]

Why does D.A. leave us and barry manilow remains horrifyingly here? In a just universe we could trade them.

Ah, well, favorite quotation, from Meaning of Liff:

Pelutho: (n) A south american ball game. The balls are whacked against a brick wall with a stout wooden bat until the prisoner confesses.

We’ll all miss ye, ye right funny bastard; ye shoulda ta’en better nick of ye.

b.

[Peregrine]

“Listen, three eyes, don’t you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.”

[Czarcasm]

From now on, I won’t be able to watch a blue whale fall out of the sky into my empty swimming pool without thinking of Douglas Adams.

And the cleaning bill.

[OneDollarWilliam]

Too many to choose from I’ll go one per book.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

(or maybe 2) “If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”

(or 3) “No, don’t move…You’d better be prepared for the jump to hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”

“You ask a glass of water.”

arrrrrrrggggggghhhhh tooo many to choose from!!!

‘…laser beams…anti-matter ray…electron ram’ ‘No,’ said Marvin…
‘Just think,’ urged Marvin, ‘they left me, an ordinary, menial robot, to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, whilst they ran off to save themselves. What do you think they would leave me with?’
‘Oooh er,’ muttered the machine in alarm, ‘something pretty damn devestating I should expect.’
‘Expect!’ said Marvin. ‘Oh yes, expect. I’ll tell you what they gave me to protect myself with shall I?’
‘Yes, all right,’ said the battle machine, bracing itself.
‘Nothing.’ said Marvin.
There was a dangerous pause.
‘Nothing?’ roared the battle machine.
‘Nothing at all,’ intoned Marvin dismally, 'not even an electronic sausage.

They knew when the rains came, it was a sign.

When the raind departed, it was a sign.

When the winds rose, it was a sign.

When in the land there was born at the midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.

When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications, or even just a child with a retroussé, that, too, would often be taken as a sign.

So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.

And each new sign signified the same thing–that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.

…Those who wish to know should read on. Others may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.

Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.

Some of the villagers wondered why almighty Bob would send his only begotten sandwich maker in a burning, fiery chariot, rather than one that would have landed more quietly instead of setting the forest on fire, filling it with ghosts, and also injuring the sandwich maker quite badly.

and here’s my favorite quote from Douglas himself:

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

I wanted to put in someting from Dirk Gentley about Zen Driving (An art which I practice.) But, I couldn’t find my book or any quotes online. I did find this:

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

ok, that’s it I promise no more quotes from me. (Except I may add a new sig line ^_~)

[Folkie]

First time I heard of Douglas Adams was in a mixed review of HGTTG in the NY Times. The reviewer, with an audible sniff, recorded a few of the banal witticisms that Adams was passing off as jokes. When I stopped rolling on the floor laughing at them I ran out and bought the book.

Now he’s gone. Well, dammit.

“Pray God I am not too soon!”
-LDTOTS

“Shall I put this (an IOU) with the other, then, sir?”
“Put it wherever it will give you the greatest joy, dear Bates. I would want you to put it nothing less.”
-LDTOTS

I believe he wrote the “City of Death” episode of Dr Who which makes him responsible for this line I am probably misquoting:
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
“If you made an omelet I would expect to find a destroyed kitchen and an unconcious chef.”

“Life is entirely new to me. What’s it like?”
Here was something that Ford felt he could speak about with authority.
“Life,” he said, " is like a grapefruit."
“How so?”
“Well, it’s sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, and squidgy in the middle. It’s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half of one for breakfast.”
“Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?”
-SLATFATF

Douglas Adams. Missing, presumed fed.

[Saltire]

“Space is not absolute, but depends on one’s movement through space; time is not absolute, but depends on one’s movement through time; and numbers are not absolute, but depend on one’s movement through Italian restaurants.”

Mr. Adams, you were truly a hoopy frood.

[Smeghead]

He’s dead? Dammit!

Here:

The Vogon began to read - a fetid little passage of his own devising.
“Oh frettled gruntbuggly…” he began. Spasms wracked Ford’s body - this was worse than ever he’d been prepared for.
“… thy micturations are to me | As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.”
“Aaaaaaarggggghhhhhh!” went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back as lumps of pain thumped through it. He could dimly see beside him Arthur lolling and rolling in his seat. He clenched his teeth.
“Groop I implore thee,” continued the merciless Vogon, “my foonting turlingdromes.”
His voice was rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned stridency. “And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!”
“Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyuuuuuuurrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!” cried Ford Prefect…

Oh, and see below:

[Jophiel]

Luckily, you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as “impossible” in my dictionary. In fact, everything between “herring” and “marmalade” appears to be missing.

I’ve often used the bit about the tea on the Heart of Gold when referring to the tea out of the coffee machine at work. Of course, no one but me knows what I’m talking about

[Jesse_Custer]

My favorite was The Guide entry for Earth – “Mostly Harmless.”

Perfect. (or is it Prefect? – never mind)

“Last Chance to See” is a rather obscure Adams work concerning endangered animal species. It is fantastic. Adams demonstrates his wit and insight without condescension or righteousness. Worth a look if you can find it…

I’m gonna miss Dirk Gently

[Jeffrey_Hartnett]

My favorite is:
“I will never be cruel to a gin and tonic again”
We will miss you Mr Adams.
So long and thanks for all the laughs.