Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

• “Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn’t have a good answer to.” ~Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
• “It seems odd, don’t you think, that the quality of the food should vary inversely with the brightness of the lighting. Makes you wonder what culinary heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness.” ~Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology
• “Come, let us go. Let us leave this festering [Tartarus]hole. Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” ~Dirk Gently
• “[St. Cedd was] one of the duller Northumbrian saints. His brother Chad was even duller. Had a cathedral in Birmingham if that gives you some idea.” ~Dirk Gently

The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy

• "He had the most astounding collection of teeth. They looked as if each came from a completely different animal, and they were ranged around his mouth at such bizarre angles that if he ever actually tried to chew anything he'd lacerate half his own face along with it and possibly put an eye out as well." ~Douglas Adams about Agrajag
• "His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn't got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground." ~Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
• "...a grin that would have sent a sane man scampering into trees..." ~Douglas Adams describing Ford Prefect in Life, The Universe, and Everything
• "Ford was humming something. It was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that someone would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. If anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Nöel Coward song called 'Mad About the Boy' over and over again. It would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons that he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the 'about the boy' bit. He was annoyed that nobody asked." ~Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything
• "Arthur experienced a dull throbbing sensation just behind the temples that was a hallmark of so many of his conversations with Ford." ~Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything
• "It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." ~Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything
• “He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.” ~Douglas Adams Life, The Universe and Everything
• “He lay still and quiet. He absorbed the enveloping darkness, slowly relaxed his limbs from end to end, eased and regulated his breathing, gradually cleared his mind of all thought, closed his eyes, and was completely incapable of getting to sleep.” ~Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
• "He didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an hour now." ~Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
• “The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable number of which are continuously clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this. The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem. This is: Change.” ~Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
• “…Los Angeles, which is described in the new edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy… as ‘being like several thousand square miles of American Express junk mail, but without the same sense of moral depth. Plus the air is, for some reason, yellow.’” ~Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
• “…San Francisco, which the Guide describes as a ‘good place to go. It is very easy to believe that everyone you meet there is also a space traveler. Starting a new religion for you is just their way of saying “hi.” Until you’ve settled in and got the hang of the place it’s best to say “no” to three questions out of any given four that anyone may ask you, because there are some very strange things going on there, some of which an unsuspecting alien could die of’.” ~ Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
• "Only his eyes still said that whatever it was the Universe thought it was doing to him, he would still like it to please stop." ~Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
• "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." ~Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
• "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." ~Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
• “If you are reading this on planet Earth then: A. Good luck to you. There is an awful lot of stuff you don’t know anything about, but you are not alone in this. It’s just that in your case, the consequences of not knowing any of this stuff are particularly terrible, but then, hey, that’s just the way the cookie gets completely stomped on and obliterated. B. Don’t imagine you know what a computer terminal is.” ~Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
• “What the [heck], he thought, you’re only young once, and threw himself out the window. That would at least keep the element of surprise on his side.” ~Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
• "Computer, if you don't open that exit hatch pretty [darn] pronto, I shall go straight to your major data banks with a very large axe and give you a reprogramming you will never forget, capisco? [Pause] Okay. Get the axe." ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
• "If I ever meet myself, I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me." ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
• "If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now." ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
• “You’re one hundred percent positive that the ship which is crashed on the bottom of this ocean is the ship which you said you were one hundred percent positive could one hundred percent positively never crash?” ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
• “Santa Zarquana Voostra! .…OK, so the guy is cool, but…I mean, own up, this is barking time, this is major lunch, this is stool approaching critical mass, this is…this is…total vocabulary failure!” ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
• "Whatever may or may not happen from here on out, I just want you to know: I respect you. Just not a lot." ~Ford Prefect to Zaphod Beeblebrox
• "There's nothing worse than having only one drunk head." ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
• "You know, this explains a lot. Because all my life, I've had this unaccountable feeling in my bones that something sinister was happening in the universe and that no one would tell me what it was." ~Arthur Dent
• "This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays." ~Arthur Dent
• "Did I do something wrong today, or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?" ~Arthur Dent
• "Look, would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" ~Arthur Dent
• "No, I'm very ordinary, but some very strange things have happened to me. You could say I'm more differed from than differing." ~Arthur Dent
• “…anything that’s to do with Ford Prefect is bound to be worse and more worrying than something that isn’t.” ~Arthur Dent
• “What do you mean?” ~Arthur Dent in response to Random’s “You don’t know what anyone means by anything!”
• “I'll handle this - I'm British; I know how to queue.” ~Arthur Dent
• “Why does the universe keep doing these insanely bewildering things to me?” ~Arthur Dent
• "We apologize for the inconvenience." ~God's final message to his creation
• “One’s never alone with a rubber duck.” ~Golgafrincham captain
• “There’s nothing like destroying the universe to get your point across.” ~Hactar
• “You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot not know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.” ~A Hawalius sage
• “It is often said that a disproportionate obsession with purely academic or abstract matter indicates a retreat from the problems of real life. However, most of the people engaged in such matters say that this attitude is based on three things: ignorance, stupidity, and nothing else.” ~The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• "...any people you may meet from time to time are the products of a deranged imagination." ~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• "In the beginning, the Universe was created...this made a lot of people angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move." ~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• "My capacity for mental activity of all kinds is as boundless as the infinite reaches of space itself. Except of course for my capacity for happiness." ~Marvin the Paranoid Android
• "That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure to not be able to avoid meeting." ~Marvin the Paranoid Android
• "Life will be a very great deal less weird without you!" ~Old Thrashbarg saying "the nicest thing anybody's ever said to [Arthur Dent]"
• “…it seems that the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out, and take the Universe with them, which would then be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened, but there is a certain amount of uncertainty about it.” ~Prak
• "Zaphod, old mate, I trust you about as far as I could comfortably spit out a rat." ~Ford Prefect
• “Arthur, just accept it. We may as well. We’re all dead, Zaphod’s out of his skulls; why not have a séance? Why not go mad?” ~Ford Prefect
• “I think they’re very clever. They’re trying to confuse us to death.” ~Ford Prefect
• "Totally mad, utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense." ~Ford Prefect
• "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working." ~A theory set forth by Ford Prefect
• "Goosnargh.” ~Ford Prefect
• "This is that thing you call sarcasm, isn't it?" ~Ford Prefect
• "Zaphod's calmed down a lot, you know...at least one of his heads is now saner than an emu on acid." ~Ford Prefect
• “You interest me strangely, Mr. Dent.” ~Ford Prefect
• “If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, then omniscience must be lethal.” ~Ford Prefect
• "Either you all give yourselves up and let us beat you up a little - though not too much, because we are firmly opposed to needless violence - or we blow up this entire planet... and one or two others that we noticed on the way over." ~Shooty the Cop
• “Of all the races in the Galaxy, only the English could possibly revive the memory of the most horrific wars to sunder the Universe and transform it into what I’m afraid is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull and pointless game.” ~Slartibartfast
• “It seemed to me that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization I could live in and stay sane.” ~Wonko the Sane
• "You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool." ~Wonko the Sane

• “Dirk, however, was having a great deal of difficulty in taking it all in. He was much more aware of taking a succession of huge swimmy whacks to the head, which were the assaults of guilt. It was not the normal background-noise type of guilt that comes from just being alive this far into the twentieth century, and which Dirk was usually fairly adept at dealing with. It was an actual stunning sense of ‘this specific terrible thing is specifically and terribly my fault.’” ~Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
• “[Toe Rag] grinned, and allowed a stray shaft of sunlight to glitter on one of his teeth. These things don’t happen by accident. Toe Rag had spent some time while Thor was unconscious working out how long it would take him to recover, then industriously moving the pile of rubble to exactly this spot, checking the height and then calculating the exact angle at which to lean. As a provocateur he regarded himself as a professional.” ~Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
• “It was the chance carelessness of it which particularly appealed to Dirk because 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
• “The lyrics were, well, straightforward. They provided a basic repetitive bit of funk rhythm and a simple sense of menace and cheerful callousness which had caught the mood of last summer.” ~Douglas Adams describing a pop hit in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
• “Things had certainly come down a long way since the great days of Faust and Mephistopheles, when a man could gain all the knowledge of the universe, achieve all the ambitions of his mind and all the pleasures of the flesh for the price of his soul. Now it was a few record royalties, a few pieces of trendy furniture, a trinket to stick on your bathroom wall and, whap, your head comes off.” ~Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
• “Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when [The Aries Rising Record Group’s] founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.” ~Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

The Salmon of Doubt

• “Viewed in a certain light, the entire structure of [Dirk Gently’s] adult life could be seen as a means of avoiding opening his bank statements. Someone else’s bank statements—now that was a different matter. He was never happier than when poring over someone else’s bank statements: he always found them to be rich in colour and narrative drive, particularly if he’d had to steam them open. But the prospect of opening his own gave him the screaming heebie-jeebies.” ~Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
• “Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there.” ~Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
• “Odd thing about being a private detective—you spend your time finding out little things about other people that nobody else knows, but then you discover that there are all sorts of things that everybody else knows about you, which you don’t.” ~Dirk Gently