Douglas Adams · 306 pages
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“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
Douglas Adams
Born place: in Cambridge, England, The United Kingdom
Born date March 11, 1952
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“Once upon a time there were two seven-year-old boys named Bruce and David. They both had mother s who loved them very much.
Each boy's day began differently.”
― Adele Faber, quote from How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk
“Matthias and I met up again in the lab after Christmas vacations and sat down to write our paper. One major question was where to send it. Nature, the British journal, and its American counterpart Science, enjoy the most prestige and visibility in the scientific community and in the general media, and either would have been an obvious choice. But they both impose strict length limits on manuscripts, and I wanted to explain all the details of what we had done—not only to convince the world that we had the real thing but also to promote our painstaking methods of extracting and analyzing ancient DNA. In addition, I had become disenchanted with both journals because of their tendency to publish flashy ancient DNA results that did not meet the scientific criteria our group considered necessary. They often seemed more interested in publishing papers that would give them coverage in the New York Times and other major media outlets than in making sure the results were sound and likely to hold up.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“I’ve always known what you need. Someone to rage at who’s strong enough to take all the pain and fury you have to dish out until you’ve burned it out of your system and nothing is left but a pile of ashes from which the Phoenix rises. Kid, woman, whatever the hell you are—I want to see you rise. Even if you have to hate me.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Feversong
“I feel strongly that from my being a little lost boy with no family to becoming a man with two, everything was meant to happen just the way it happened. And I am profoundly humbled by that thought.”
― quote from A Long Way Home
“Turkish Delight
Turkish delight has had a bad reputation since that man C.S.Lewis - a positive genius in other ways - linked it for ever with one of the most terrifying creations in literature, the White Witch of Narnia, and that naughty, sticky, traitorous Edmund. But with the sensuous pleasure imbued in its melting, gelatinous texture, and, when made in the proper way, delicately perfumed with rose petals, flavoured with oils and dusted with sugar, it reclaims its power as a sweet as seductive as Arabian nights. The fact that it now carries with it a whiff of danger merely adds to its pleasure. It is not, truly, a sweet for children. They simply complain, and get the almonds stuck up their noses,”
― Jenny Colgan, quote from Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
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