English writer & humorist (1952-2001)
Generally, old media don't die. They just have to grow old gracefully. Guess what, we still have stone masons. They haven't been the primary purveyors of the written word for a while now of course, but they still have a role because you wouldn't want a TV screen on your headstone.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future
My capacity for happiness ... you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
I think media are at their most interesting before anybody's thought of calling them art, when people still think they're just a load of junk.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
A.V. Club interview, Jan. 28, 1998
Really, the moment you have any idea, the second thought that enters your mind after the original idea is, "What is this? Is it a book, is it a movie, is it a this, is it a that, is it a short story, is it a breakfast cereal?" Really, from that moment, your decision about what kind of thing it is then determines how it develops.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
A.V. Club interview, Jan. 28, 1998
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Salmon of Doubt
Hey! What's this thing coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding word like ... ow ... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name -- ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?
DOUGLAS ADAMS
a very surprised sperm whale, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Episode 3, January 19, 1981
Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
"Douglas Adams: The First and Last Tapes", Darker Matter: Online Science Fiction Magazine
He's spending a year dead for tax reasons.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
I had a letter from a guy about something I'd written in a Doctor Who script, to do with super-compressed matter, degenerate matter and gravitational fields. That particular bit of the script came from realising, late at night, when I thought I'd more or less got the thing finished, that I had 13 super-compressed planets I hadn't accounted for, which I somehow had to do something with. So I sat up and sat up and practically hosed myself down with black coffee and finally came up with a solution, just on the logic of it. And I had a letter from this astrophysicist saying "Where did you find out about this? We're only doing the work now.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
"Douglas Adams: The First and Last Tapes", Darker Matter: Online Science Fiction Magazine
Moving from radio to television, you can take most of the words with you.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
"Douglas Adams: The First and Last Tapes", Darker Matter: Online Science Fiction Magazine