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

About the author

Popular quotes

“Gabriel gazed at his reflection in the mirror. To his shock and dismay, he was clad only in his underwear, a cheeky pair of boxer shorts that had the phrase 'Medievalists Do It in the Dark (Ages)' printed all over them in phosphorescent lettering.”
― Sylvain Reynard, quote from Gabriel's Redemption

“The point I was trying to make before you interrupted with your inventory
of my personality is that neither of us is going to be able to stay celibate for the next six months."

She dropped her eyes. If only he knew that she'd stayed that way all her life.

We'll be living in close quarters," he went on. "We're legally married, and it's only natural that we're going to get it on."

Get it on? His bluntness reminded her that none of this meant anything to him emotionally, and contrary to all logic, she'd wanted to hear something romantic. With some pique, she said, "In other words, you expect me to keep house, work for the circus, and 'get it on' with you."

He thought it over. "I guess that's about the size of it.”
― Susan Elizabeth Phillips, quote from Kiss an Angel

“The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Children of the Mind

“A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Time Enough for Love

“Be careful what you wish for.”
― Michelle Hodkin, quote from The Retribution of Mara Dyer

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.