- [on BBC Online chat, 11/8/00] I'm 48, which is a bit of a shock to me. Why only last year I thought I was a precocious young thing!
- [11/8/00] I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas . . . cultures . . . and systems of thought we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word freedom means than I see much evidence of in America. To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that in Europe we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.
- I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
- [agreeing that Starship Titanic (1998) should be delayed rather than released incomplete] We should nail our colors to the mast of quality.
- I loved Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969). For years I wanted to be John Cleese, I was most disapointed when I found out the job had been taken.
- When it comes down to it, my principle is this - Arthur should be British. The rest of the cast should be decided purely on merit and not on nationality.
- A danger one runs is that the moment you have anything in the script that's clearly meant to be funny in some way, everybody thinks 'oh well we can do silly voices and silly walks and so on', and I think that's exactly the wrong way to do it.
- Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
- Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
- Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.
- Cyberspace is - or can be - a good, friendly and egalitarian place to meet.
- I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
- There is a particular disdain with which Siamese cats regard you. Anyone who has walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will be familiar with the feeling.
- We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.
- I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
- 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: It is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves into a position of power should on no account be allowed to do the job. Another problem with governing people is people.
- Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash form point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all decide where the hell they wanted to be.
- There are two things in particular that it [the computer industry] failed to foresee: one was the coming of the Internet . . . the other was the fact that the century would end.
- Having been an English literary graduate, I've been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity. 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.
- See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
- The big corporations are suddenly taking notice of the web, and their reactions have been slow. Even the computer industry failed to see the importance of the Internet, but that's not saying much. Let's face it, the computer industry failed to see that the century would end.
- I think that Doctor Who (1963) is at its best when the humour and the drama work together and that however absurd a situation may be, it is actually very, very real and it has very real consequences. That's the moment at which something that's inherently absurd actually becomes frightening.
- I had a great deal of say, but the producer didn't have a great deal of listen.
- It is not considered fashionable in Britain to know things or to talk about stuff. You should bear this in mind when visiting.
- One of the best ways to keep from being unhappy is not to have a word for it.
- These people look at a catflap and they say "I could have thought of that!" The point is they didn't, and a very revealing and significant point it is too.
- Trying to predict the future is a mug's game. But it's a game we increasingly have to play because the World is changing so fast. And we need to have some idea of what the future's going to be like because we're going to have to live there. Probably, next week.
- Present someone with a clipboard questionnaire and they lie. You'd be amazed how many people out there are the millionaire CEO of their own company.
- Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod's Braincare Specialist: "Zaphod's just this guy, you know?" Vogon Captain: "A personal friend?" Gag Halfrunt: "In my line we don't make personal friends" Vogon Captain: "Professional Detachment?" Gag Halfrunt: "No, we just don't have the knack..."
- He was a Poet, a Philosopher and a Dreamer. Or, as his wife would have it, an "Idiot".
- The inventor of the Total Perspective Vortex did it, as is the case with the best of things, to annoy his wife.
- [So long and thanks for all the fish] She was mostly immensely relieved to think that virtually everything that anybody had ever told her was wrong.
- I had this nightmare that all my friends got to go to Heaven or Hell while I was sent to Southend.
- I've just had an unhappy love affair, so I don't see why anyone else should have a good time.
- I write Poetry to throw my mean, callous, heartless exterior into sharp relief!
- And this, of course, is the nub of the matter, because most of the things which stir the universe up in any way are caused by dispossessed people. There are two ways of accounting for this. One is to say that if everyone just sat around at home nothing would ever happen - this is very simple - the other is to say, as Oolon Colluphid has at great length in his book 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Guilt, But Were Too Ashamed to Ask', that every being in the universe is tied to his birthplace by tiny invisible force tendrils composed of little quantum packets of guilt. If you travel far from your birthplace, these tendrils get stretched and distorted. This compares with an ancient Arcturan Proverb "How ever fast the body travels, the soul travels at the speed of an Arcturan Mega-Camel." This would mean, in these days of hyperspace and Improbability Drive, that most people's souls are wandering unprotected in deep space in a state of some confusion; and this would account for a lot of things. Similarly, if your birthplace is actually destroyed, or in Arthur Dent's case demolished - ostensibly to make way for a new hyperspace bypass - then these tendrils are severed and flap about at random. There are no people to be fed or whales to be saved; there is no washing up to be done. And these flapping tendrils of guilt can seriously disturb the space-time continuum.
- So why did I buy my Psion from Duty Free? Because I'm a blithering idiot, that's why.
- I just got myself the New MacBook. I know, I know: you hate me.
- [Long Dark Teatime of the Soul] Yes, Madam, I know that gifted children can appear to be stupid, but you must understand that stupid children can appear to be stupid. Yes, I know it must be painful...
- [on the writing process] Writing isn't so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don't be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don't strain at them. Writing can be good. You attack it, don't let it attack you. You can get pleasure out of it. You can certainly do very well for yourself with it!
- The quality of someone's advice is meaningless without first knowing their life story.
- Whereas most people were content to remember stuff, I wanted to understand it.
- People don't understand being rich, it's all about spending money to make money.
- [Michael Wenton-Weekes, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Radio Version] It's one thing to be Sick, but you try convincing people that you're better!
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