Quotes from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on 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.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"

"The what?" said Richard.

"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."

"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."

"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“That was it. That was really it. She knew that she had told herself that that was it only seconds earlier, but this was now the final real ulimate it.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt - that you would at least know the answer when you were dead.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea
into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn’t that true?”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Yes it is,' said the Professor. 'Wait—' he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate— 'let it be. It won't be long.'

Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?'

The Professor looked blankly at him.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The light works," he said, indicating the window, "the gravity works," he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. "Anything else we have to take our chances with.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Believe me, it is a great deal better to find cast-iron proof that you're innocent than to languish in a cell hoping that the police---who already think you're guilty---will find it for you.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Gordon Way's astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn't believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it damn well did. If nothing terrible happened to him soon maybe she'd do it herself. Now there was an idea.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He felt like an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left in the sun to dry.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He turned slowly like a fridge door opening.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The light was only just visible - except of course that there was no one to see, no witnesses, not this time, but it was nevertheless a light.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Sunlight played along the River Cam. People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off. Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light. Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

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Popular quotes

“When you read the account of a murder - or, say, a fiction story based on murder - you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given moment at a given point. People are brought into it from different parts of the globe and for unforeseen reasons. [...] The murder itself is the end of the story. It's Zero Hour.”

He paused.

“It's Zero Hour now.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Towards Zero

“The Nuru men, and their women, had done what they did for more than torture and shame. They wanted to create Ewu children. Such children are not the children of forbidden love between a Nuru and an Okeke, nor are they Noahs, Okekes born without color. The Ewu are children of violence.

An Okeke woman will never kill a child kindled inside of her. She would go against even her husband to keep a child in her womb alive. However, custom dictates that the child is the child of her father. These Nuru had planted poison. An Okeke woman who gave birth to an Ewu child was bound to the Nuru through her child.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death

“Could be off one of your own boats, Lavette," Whittier said. "The crab I mean." Whittier was hostile, contriving his hostility in witless remarks. Dan said nothing, only thinking that if this small, pompous, foolish man, so uninformed about the essence of his own business, was a measure of the hundred tycoons who ruled the hills of San Francisco, then his own way up would be none too difficult. It came down to money; if you had money, you functioned and you could do without guts or brains; and if you had money, you saw a girl like Jean Sheldon more than once, more than by accident.”
― Howard Fast, quote from The Immigrants

“El amor verdadero no era precisamente uno de esos absolutos; pregunta en la cual la palabra <>, sin embargo, tenía tanto que ver con la empleada por Kant o Hegel como la palabra <> con un descarrilamiento o un terremoto, con sus aullidos y su sangre. Bruno respondía que, a su juicio, la calidad del amor que hay entre dos seres que se quieren cambia de un instante a otro, haciéndose de pronto sublime, bajando luego hasta la trivialidad, convirtiéndose más tarde en algo afectuoso y cómodo, para repentinamente convertirse en un odio trágico o destructivo".”
― Ernesto Sabato, quote from On Heroes and Tombs

“I guess this is a message for those of you who contemplate permanent solutions to temporary problems. You never know what could be coming in the future. There is so much music you've yet to hear.”
― Hannah Hart, quote from Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded

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