Happy Birthday, Douglas Adams

[filkertom]

On this date in 1952.

Let's make it silly. What are some of your favorite lines from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series?

Comments

[foenix.livejournal.com]

I know I'm gonna screw it up, but I've always loved the way to keep a robot distracted by throwing down a herring sandwich in front of it, but it can't keep it in it's hand, so it keeps dropping and picking it up over and voer again...

"Ah! A herring sandwich! I love herring sandwiches..."

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

Hehehhe...yeah, I loved that. :)

-=ShoEboX=-

[pabsungenis.livejournal.com]

"This is not her story."

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

"This is her story."

Boy did I flip out at that one the first time I read it.

[glynisgwynedd.livejournal.com]

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

[laurel-potter.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what she said. (see my reply further down)

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

The trilogy of "God's Greatest Mistakes", "More of God's Greatest Mistakes" and "Who is this God Person Anyway?".

It's unpleasantly like being drunk.
What's unpleasant about that?
Ask a glass of water.

[thealien.livejournal.com]

I think it was "Where God Went Wrong", "Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes" and "Who Is This God Person Anyway?".

His later book was "Well, That About Wraps It Up For God".

At least, that's what I recall. Might have been from the radio version.

[fmh.livejournal.com]

"I'm so hip I have trouble seeing over my own pelvis" - Zaphod Beeblebrox

"Ah...this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' I wasn't previously aware of." - Arthur Dent

[ladyoceanstar.livejournal.com]

One of my favorites:

Bartender: Do you really think the world is going to end?
Ford: Yes.
Bartender: Last call.

[zebrapix.livejournal.com]

"You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to the building plans had you? I mean like actually telling anyone or anything."

"But the plans were on display."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar."

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of The Leopard'."

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

"You fell through time like a stone through a wet paper bag. I hate wet paper bags."

"Please do not press this button again"

And the line from the radio episodes from which I took my name:
"He wasn't so much a leopard...more a sort of...well, you know...shoebox."

-=ShoEboX=-

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

"Full of size 9 chukka boots."

[camric.livejournal.com]

"For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across-which happened to be the Earth-where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

"We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"

"For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be the Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."

"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."

[foenix.livejournal.com]

The entire scene with Deep Thought was genius. Loaded with great quotes.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Practically anything Marvin says:

"Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."

***

Marvin: "I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
Zem: "Er, five."
Marvin: "Wrong. You see?"

***

"The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into sort of a decline"

***

And, of course, the classic "Life. Don't talk to me about life."

***

Aside from those, only about half the books :-P (Though it took me rather a long time to appreciate them; there was one copy amongst six or seven of us, back in college, and I was the last to get to read it. Which meant that I'd heard ALL the good quotes, roughly eighteen thousand times each. Fortunately, time, which wounds all heels, did its stuff.)

[kenalepha.livejournal.com]

I stll quote the "Life, don't talk to me about life." quote on a regular basis..

[hanabishirecca.livejournal.com]

"Arther Phillip Dent?"
"Yeah?"
"Your a jerk."
"What?"
"A real knee-biter"

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

It must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

"Don't try and out-weird me. I get weirder things than you free in breakfast cereal" -- Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Its pretty much been my rule for life.

[razzle.livejournal.com]

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything
so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that
some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching
proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it?
It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so
therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly
vanished in a puff of logic."

[warinbear.livejournal.com]

`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly
vanished in a puff of logic.

That was also the first thing that came to my mind, though without the leadup and with the 'zebra crossing' phrase to follow.

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

"We have achieved normality. Anything else you may experience is therefore your own fault..."

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

It's not specific passages that I remember so much as Adams' ability to spin a sentence completely and wonderfully out of control:

"He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield couch across the fields of prehistoric Earth."

Or, better known, ...

"He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

On second thought, I remembered those, didn't I?

[laurel-potter.livejournal.com]

Without looking it up, from the first book: "It hung in the air exactly the way bricks don't."

[wyattkelly.livejournal.com]

"And then, with a solid, wet thud, there was silence."

[ericcoleman]

I love everything here ... my favorites are here several times ...

I will say, after reading these,and reading a couple of these to my eldest boy, he is now going to FINALLY read the books ...

he's gonna love them, he's an absurdist at heart

[daundelyon.livejournal.com]

"Late, as in the late DentArthurDent!"

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

All of them :D

[youngcurmudgeon.livejournal.com]

"The lobby was empty; Ford nevertheless managed to weave his way through it."

"So long and thanks for all the fish."

That's all I can think of off the top of my head and before coffee.

[figmentatious.livejournal.com]

"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss"

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

[sydb42.livejournal.com]

"Oh no, not again" --the petunia