Quotes from The Salmon of Doubt

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“It {Darwin's theory of evolution] was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“The hotel shop only had two decent books, and I'd written both of them”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea- when we went on school trips to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“You’re paid a lot and you’re not happy, so the first thing you do is buy stuff that you don’t want or need—for which you need more money.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“I have terrible periods of lack of confidence. I just don't believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“There is a particular disdain with which Siamese cats regard you. Anyone who has walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will be familiar with the feeling.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“It's quicker, easier, and involves less licking”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“And the most interesting natural structure?

A giant, two-thousand-mile-long fish in orbit around Jupiter, according to a reliable report in the Weekly World News. The photograph was very convincing, and I'm only surprised that more-reputable journals like New Scientist, or even just The Sun, haven't followed up with more details. We should be told.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“Like, for instance, standing in the kitchen wondering what you went in there for. Everybody does it, but because there isn’t—or wasn’t—a word for it, everyone thinks it’s something that only they do and that they are therefore more stupid than other people. It is reassuring to realize that everybody is as stupid as you are and that all we are doing when we are standing in the kitchen wondering what we came in here for is “woking.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“I'm a writer and I'm feeling like death, as you would too if you'd just flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan at some ungodly hour of the morning only to discover that you can't get into your hotel room for another three hours. In fact it's enough just to have flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you are a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, then please assume that I am just kidding. Anyone else will surely realise that I am not.

Having nowhere else to go, I am standing up, leaning against a mantelpiece. Well, a kind of mantelpiece. I don't know what it is, in fact. It's made of brass and some kind of plastic and was probably drawn in by the architect after a nasty night on the town. That reminds me of another favourite piece of information: there is a large kink in the trans-Siberian railway because when the Czar (I don't know which Czar it was because I am not in my study at home I'm leaning against something shamefully ugly in Michigan and there are no books) decreed that the trans-Siberian railway should be built, he drew a line on a map with a ruler. The ruler had a nick in it.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

“An international power supply is the device which means it doesn't matter what country you're in, or even if you know what country you're in (more of a problem than you might suspect) - you just plug your Mac in and it figures it out for itself. We call this principle Plug and Play. Or at least, Microsoft calls it that because it hasn't got it yet. In the Mac world we've had it for so long we didn't even think of giving it a name.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Salmon of Doubt

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Popular quotes

“somehow we have overlooked the fact this treasured called the heart can also be broken, has been broken, and now lies in pieces down under the surface. When it comes to habits we cannot quit or patterns we cannot stop, anger that flies out of nowhere, fears we cannot overcome, or weaknesses we hate to admit--much of what troubles us comes out of the broken places in our hearts crying out for relief.

Jesus speaks as if we are all brokenhearted. We would do well to trust His perspective on this.”
― John Eldredge, quote from Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive

“It lays on his abdomen, angled slightly to the left. It's almost cute-kind of like Snuffleupagus. Well, not really. It's huge, but not hairy, and also not nearly as daunting as when it's hard. It is magical, though. I stifle a giggle because, goddamn it, I've never seen a snuffie up close. The head is tucked up inside the soft skin, an eye peering out from the turtleneck.”
― Helena Hunting, quote from Pucked

“Upon retirement from the civil or the military some of them came to Pankot – not to die (although they did – and were buried in the churchyard of St John’s – C of E – or St Edward’s – RC) but to enjoy their remaining years in a place that was peculiarly Indian but very much their own, and where servants were cheap, and English flowers could be grown (sometimes spectacularly) in the gardens, and life take on the serenity of fulfilment, of duty done without the depression of going home wondering what it had been done for.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Day of the Scorpion

“What is the course and drift of your compact?”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Comedy of Errors

“Like the children in fairy stories who have seen their parents make pacts with terrifying strangers, who have discovered that our fears are based on nothing but the truth, but who come back fresh from marvellous escapes and take up their knives and forks, with humility and good manners, prepared to live happily ever after -- like them, dazed and powerful with secrets, I never said a word”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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