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 I have many many other favourite Douglas Adams quotes, but until I go through the Guide again, I haven't got them all here. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy 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."
" ... elegant gazelle-like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway."
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe "I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered!"
Life, the Universe and Everything "...then we don't stand a whelk's chance in a supernova."
Only 20 minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the field of Prehistoric Earth.
Mostly Harmless (the fifth part in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy) Anything that happens, happens.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency "... I have a memory like a... like a... what are those things you drain rice in? What am I talking about?"
"If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, we have to at least consider that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands."
The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul He wondered for a moment what it was like to be a whale. Physically, he thought, he was probably well placed to get some good insights, though whales were better adapted for their lives of gliding about in the vast pelagic blueness than he was for his of struggling up the Pentonville Road traffic in a weary old Jaguar - but what he was thinking of, in fact, was the whales' songs. In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships' motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other's songs or messages.
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 The Black Cauldron "I can't help, ah, adding a little colour to the facts - most facts need it so badly."
"Since you're leading us," Eilonwy remarked, "I wonder if it would be too much to expect you to know where you're going."
"My war leader at home has an old wound that gives him a twinge when the weather changes. Very handy, I admit; though it does seem a painful way of foretelling rain. I always think it's easier just to wait, and every kind of weather's bound to come along sooner or later."
"Come along, my ducklings," the enchantress said cheerily. "I promise it won't hurt a bit. You can bring your sword if you want," she added with an indulgent smile at Taran, "though you won't need it. I've never seen a toad with a sword. On the other hand, I've never seen a sword with a toad, so you're welcome to do as you please."
"We could block up their chimney and smoke them out," Eilonwy said. "Then one of us could sneak into the cottage. No," she added, "on second thought, I'm afraid anything we might put down their chimney - well - they could very likely put something worse up. Besides, they don't have a chimney, so we shall have to forget that idea."
"... as far as being an Assistant Pig-Keeper is concerned, I think you're a perfectly marvellous one. Believe me, there's no question in my mind you're the best Assistant Pig-Keeper in all Prydain. How many others there are, I'm sure I don't know, but that's beside the point."
"He will not succeed in this," Taran said. "Somehow, we must find a way to escape. We dare not lose hope."
"That's like wondering whether to scratch your head when a boulder's about to fall on it."
The Castle of Llyr 'Tremble!' the quavering voice cried again. 'You shall tremble!'
'... I say,' he [Prince Rhun] added, 'it's astonishing, but I wonder what became of all the bats?'
'If Glew spoke the truth, it comes from a place of enchantments,' Taran said. 'But what can it tell us? I shall not destroy it,' he added, returning the book to his jacket. 'I can't explain; I feel as though I'd touched a secret. It's strange, like a moth that brushes your hand and flutters away again.'
'Wake up,' Taran cried, shaking her. 'You're dreaming.'
Taran Wanderer 'These cantrev nobles are much alike, prickly as porcupines one moment and friendly as puppies the next. They all hoard their possessions, yet they can be generous to a fault if the mood strikes them. As for valour, they're no cowards. Death rides in the saddle with them and they count it nothing, and in battle I've seen them gladly lay down their lives for a comrade. At the same time,' he added, 'it's also been my experience, in all my wanderings, that farther from the deed, the greater it grows, and the most glorious battle is the one longest past. So it's hardly surprising how many heroes you run into.'
'A Fflam is agile!' Fflewddur panted, ruefully rubbing his back. 'Great Belin, there's not a tree I can't climb - ah, except this one.'
'I've heard men complain of doing woman's work, and women complain of doing man's work,' ... ' but I've never heard the work complain of who did it, so long as it got done!'
The High King '... take this as a gift from a crone to a maiden, and know there is not so much difference between the two. For even a tottering granddan keeps a portion of girlish heart, and the youngest maiden a thread of old woman's wisdom.'
'You are the oaken staff I lean on,' Taran said. 'More than that.' He laughed. 'You are the whole sturdy tree, and a true warrior.'
'Did I shout for victory today?' he whispered hoarsely. 'Small comfort to folk who once befriended me. Have I served them well? The blood of Merin is on my ahnds.'
'I choose what is best for Prydain,' he continued. 'I do not serve Arawn. Is the axe the woodcutter's maser? At the end, it is Arawn who will serve me.'
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 X-Wing: Iron Fist "That's what I like to hear. Acknowledgement of my superoior intellect along with a desire to hurt someone else very badly. It's a good day for me."
"Pirates," Piggy said, interrupting. The Gamorrean settled into a stuffed chair situated between Janson's sofa and the bar, near Donos and Castin.
Starfighters of Adumar "If you continue to map the Unknown Regions, you'll have to call them something else."
"Leader, Three. Diplomacy means saying something soothing as you squeeze the trigger, right?"
"There are three types of dress clothing," Hobbie had said. "The kind that offends the wearer, the kind that offends the viewer, and the kind that offends everybody. I'm going for the third type. Fair is fair."
"I still have to figure out what sort of reason to give them for simulated duels," Wedge said. "Something they'll accept within the parameters of their honor code."
They reached the street. Wedge was struck sideways by a blast of intense light; he stumbled, threw up his sleeve to block the glare. "Sithspit! What's that?"
"That old lack of oxygen thing will get you every time. How much brain damage did you suffer?"
"... ths mrnng," said the cabinet beside him, its words muffled.
"Have you ever thought about sleeping, boss?"
"You lied to me," Hobbie said.
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 Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett) "You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say."
Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.
Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead. If you take the small view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a large plastic snowman at the bottom.
"You're Hells Angels, then? What chapter are you from?"
"James Bond just unscrews things," said Anathema.
They'd been brought up to it and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.
Smoke and Mirrors I was trying to imagine the very last book of the Bible.
Avaunt, foul beast, I said.
'All his dreams have come to this: a lonely death upon a distant cliff.'
This is my body, he said, two thousand years ago. This is my blood.
The Sandman: Fables and Reflections "Your son's head is valuable to you, and I am attached to mine. Indeed, hitherto we have been inseparable."
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Perelandra I suppose every one knows this fear of getting "drawn in" - the moment at which a man realises that what had seemed mere speculations are on the point of landing him in the Communist Party or the Christian Church - the sense that a door has just slammed and left him on the inside.
To think that the spectre you see is an illusion does not rob him of his terrors: it simply adds the further terror of madness itself - and then on top of that the horrible surmise that those whom the rest of us call mad have, all along, been the only people who see the world as it really is.
My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we call "good," but I wasn't sure whether I liked "goodness" so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good will come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it is also dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.
"Do you feel quite happy about it?" said I, for a sort of horror was beginning once more to creep over me.
I was questioning him on the subject [of the voyage to Venus] - which he doesn't often allow - and had incautiously said, "Of course I realise it's all rather too vague for you to put into words," when he took me up rather sharply, for such a patient man, by saying, "On the contrary, it is words that are vague. The reason why the thing can't be expressed is that it's too definite for language."
If the Lady were to be kept in obedience only by the forcible removal of the Tempter, what was the use of that? What would it prove? And if the temptation were not a proving or testing, why was it allowed to happen at all? Did Maleldil suggest that our own world might have been saved if the elephant had accidentally trodden on the serpent a moment before Eve was about to yeild? Was it as easy and un-moral as that? The thing was patently absurd!
He determined to give up guessing how the time was going. "The only safe answer," he told himself, "is to think of the earliest hour you can supose possible, and then assume the real time is two hours earlier than that."
That Hideous Strength "Damn it all," continued Feverstone, "no man likes to have his stock in trade taken away. What would poor Curry, here, do if the Die-hards one day all refused to do any Die-harding? Othello's occupation would be gone."
"That's just the point. You'll hear people like Curry and James burbling away about the 'war' againt reaction. It never enters their heads that it might be a real war with real casualties. They think the violent resistance of the other side ended with the persecution of Galileo and all that. But don't believe it. It is just seriously beginning. They know now that we have at last got real powers; that the question of what humanity is going to be is going to be decided in the next sixty years. They're going to fight every inch. They'll stop at nothing."
He concluded by suggesting that they should all stand in silence for one minute as a token of respect for the memory of William Hingest.
The thing you fear is impossible. Well and good. Can you therefore cease to fear it? Not here and now. And what then? If you must see ghosts, it is better not to disbelieve in them.
"Oh," said Wither, "there is nothing I should more deeply deplore. Scientific examination (I cannot allow the word Torture in this context) in cases where the patient doesn't know the answer is always a fatal mistake."
Ransom shook his head. "You do not understand," he said. "The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their mother and from the Father in Heaven. You might go East so far that East became West and you returned to Britain, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is all over Tellus."
... mixed with this was the sense that she had been manoeuvered into a false position. It ought to have been she who was saying these things to the Christians. Hers ought to have been the vivid, perilous world brought against their grey formalised one; hers the quick, vital movements and theirs the stained glass attitudes. That was the antithesis she was used to. This time, in a flash of purple and crimson, she remembered what stained glass was really like.
... Feverstone, not much hurt but a good deal shaken, climbed out of the stolen car. That car had ended its course upside down in a deep ditch, and Feverstone, always ready to look on the bright side, reflected as he extricated himself that things might have been worse - it might have been his own car.
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