2 books mention “Douglas Adams.”
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The Hitchhikers Guide to the GalaxyThe Salmon of Doubt
Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
by Douglas Adams
A great author.
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The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Book 2The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
by Douglas Adams
Memorable Quotes by Douglas Adams:
“The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
“A wild-skinned sky-gypsy approached them and played electric violin at them until Zaphod gave him a lot of money and he agreed to go away again.”
“Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and 'maximum-capacity-eight-persons' jobs bear much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on the curious principle of 'defocused temporal perception.' In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for elevators.”
“They wrapped themselves in animal skins and furs which Ford Perfect acquired by a technique he once learned from a couple of ex-Pralite monks, all on the make, because the mental control techniques the Order have evolved as a form of devotional discipline are, frankly, sensational - and extraordinary numbers of monks leave the Oder just after they have finished their devotional training and just before they take their final vows to stay locked in small metal boxes for the rest of their lives. Ford's technique seemed to consist mainly of standing still for a while and smiling. After a while an animal - a deer perhaps- would appear from out of the trees and watch him cautiously. Ford would continue to smile at it, his eyes would soften and shine, and he would seem to radiate a deep and universal love, a love which reached out to embrace all of creation.”
“Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking. An impoverished hitchhiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counselor for neurotic elevators.”
“The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain - since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. "have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as 38 times in a single day.”
“And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her. And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole of infinity of creation and herself in relation to it. To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”
“The tables were fanned out in a large circle around a central stage area where a small band were playing light music, at least a thousand tables was Athur's guess, and interspersed among them were swaying palms, hissing fountains, grotesque statuary, in short, all the paraphernalia common to all restaurants that no expense has been spared to give the impression that no expense has been spared. Athur glanced round, half expecting to see someone making an American Express commercial.”
“The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, while the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet. Their songs are on the whole very simple and follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason. Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.”
“This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.”
“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting 'Gotcha.' It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it." "Why not?" "Because if you're dealing with somebody who has that sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."”
“The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them - who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?”
“But what about the End of the Universe? We'll ,miss the big moment." "I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod,"nothing but a gnab gib." "A what?" Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy." Few of the other diners paid them any attention as they weaved their way through the Restaurant to the exit. Their eyes were riveted on the horror of the skies. "An interesting effect to watch for," Max was telling them, "is in the upper left-hand quadrant of the sky, where if you look very carefully you can see the star system HastroBut what about the End of the Universe? We'll ,miss the big moment." "I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod,"nothing but a gnab gib." "A what?" Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy." Few of the other diners paid them any attention as they weaved their way through the Restaurant to the exit. Their eyes were riveted on the mil boiling away into the ultraviolet.”
“I know," said Marvin. "Stay out of this, Marvin,"said Ford. "This is organism talk." "It's printed in the Earthman's brainwave patterns,"continue Marvin,"but I don't suppose you'll be very interested in knowing that." "You mean,"said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?" "Yes," said Marvin. "And ...?" Auther said. "It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small." "Ah," said Arthur, "abuse." "Yes," confirmed Marvin. "Ah, ignore him," said Zaphod, "he's only making it up." "Making it up?" said Marvin, swiveling his head in a parody of astonishment. "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it." "Marvin," said Trillian in the gentle, kindly voice that she was still of assuming in talking to this misbegotten creature, "if you knew all along, why then didn't you tell us?" "You didn't ask," he said simply.”
“... fine weather for the concert here this afternoon. I'm standing here in front of the stage," the reporter lied,"in the middle of the Rudlit Desert, and with the aid of hyperbinoptic glasses I can just make out the huge audience cowering there on the horizon all around me. Behind me the speaker stacks rise like sheer cliff face, and high above me the sun is shining away and doesn't know what's going to hit it. The environmentalist lobby do know what's going to hit it, and they claim that the concert will cause earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, irreparable damage to the atmosphere and all the usual things that environmentalist usually go on about. But I've just had a report that a representative of Disaster Area met with the environmentalists at lunchtime, and had them all shot, so nothing now lies in the way ..."”
“It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in "It's a niceday," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're all going to die." His first theory was that if humans didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this - "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working." In fact, this second theory is more literally true of the Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon. The Belcerebon people used to cause great resentment and insecurity among neighboring races by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished and, above all, quiet civilizations in the Galaxy.”
“As a punishment for this behavior, which was held to be offensively self-righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal inflicted on them that most cruel of all social diseases, telepathy. Consequently, in order to prevent themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crossed their minds to anyone within a five mile radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains, the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon has become. Another method of temporarily blotting out their minds is to play host to a Disaster Area concert.”
“Moments before the flare reached Kakrafoon the pounding desert cracked along a deep faultline. A huge and hitherto undetected underground river lying far beneath gushed to the surface to be followed seconds later by the eruption of millions of tons of boiling lava that flowed hundreds of feet into the air, instantaneously vaporizing the river both above and below the surface in an explosion that echoed to the far side of the world and back again. Those -very few- who witnessed the event and survived wear that the whole hundred thousand square miles of the desert rose into the air like a mile-thick pancake, flipped itself over and fell back down. At that precise moment the solar radiation from the flares filtered through the clouds of vaporized water and struck the ground.”
“A year later, the hundred thousand square mile desert was thick with flowers. The structure of the atmosphere around the planet was subtly altered. The sun blazed less harshly in the summer, the cold bit less bitterly in the winter, pleasant rain fell more often and slowly the desert world of Kakrafoon became a paradise. Even the telepathic power with which the people of Kakrafoon had been cursed was permanently dispersed by the force of the explosion. A spokesman for Disaster Area - the one who had had all the environmentalists shot - was later quoted as saying that it had been "a good gig." Many people spoke movingly of the healing powers of music. A few skeptical scientists examined the records of the event more closely, and claimed that they had discovered faint vestiges of a vast artifically induced Improbability Field drifting in from a nearby region of space.”
“It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N-N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian "chinanto/mnigs" which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan "tzjin-anthony-ks" which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond that fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.”
“What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural lingusts go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old strucural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Strucural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.”
“A wonderful quietness would descend on the surrounding countryside, peaceful and serene, emanating from this transfigured man. Slowly the deer would approach, step by step, until it was almost nuzzling him, whereupon Ford Perfect would reach out to it and break its neck. "Pheromone control." he said it was. "You just have to know how to generate the right smell."”
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