"The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry."
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Douglas Adams quotes (page 26 of 29)
578 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Ghastly," continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut in to his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. " 'All the doors in his spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.' " As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sighlike quality to it. "Hummmmmmmyummmmmmmah!" it said."
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"Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality."
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"High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse."
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"Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood...blood...blood...blood..."
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"A theory of the universe that states: If anyone finds out what the universe is for, it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable."
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"He felt like an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left in the sun to dry."
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"Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him."
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"The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone."
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"I am terribly proud of-I was born in Cambridge in 1952 and my initials are DNA!"
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"Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers."
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"We’ll meet the meat."
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"Hey, this is terrific!" he said. "Someone down there is trying to kill us!" "Terrific," said Arthur. "But don't you see what this means?" "Yes. We are going to die." "Yes, but apart from that." "Apart from that?!" "It means we must be on to something!" "How soon can we get off it?"
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"It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you."
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"The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck, whilst the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn't feel ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative third duck anyway, and certainly not whilst it, the second duck, was busy flying."
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"But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving"
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"He actually caught himself saying things like "Yippee," as he pranced ridiculously round the house."
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"He turned slowly like a fridge door opening."
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"He didn't know why he had become president of the galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be."
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"He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts."
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