Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adamswas an English author, scriptwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 March 1952
distance night light
The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like. It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.
distance simple imagination
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination.
distance night sky
Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless
distance lying science
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
ford gave hollow learn malicious peace people together
Why can't people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?' said Arthur. / Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh. / 'Forty-two!' he said with a malicious grin, 'No, doesn't work. Never mind.
anybody assumed everybody kid knew seen sure wide
I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn't anything going on on the outside!
jobs knowing use
Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.
thinking giving want
If I want to read something that's really giving me something serious and fundamental to think about, about the human condition, if you like, or what we're all doing here, or what's going on, then I'd rather read something by a scientist in the life sciences, like Richard Dawkins, for instance.
writing sitting artistic
There's nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, "Well, okay, I'm going to do something of high artistic worth." It's funny.
fun player computer
You turn the computer into the storyteller and the player into the audience, like in the old days when the storyteller would actually respond to the audience, rather than just having the audience respond to the storyteller. I had an enormous amount of fun, actually, working on that.
art thinking suspicious
I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.
sacrifice thinking self
What was the self-sacrifice?" I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes." Why was that self-sacrifice?" Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly. I think we have different value systems." Well mine's better.
divinity likes shapes
Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends.
art opportunity simple
There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.