Quotes from book
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous detective novel by English writer Douglas Adams, first published in 1987. It is described by the author on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic".

“"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“Gordon Way's astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The light works," he said, indicating the window, "the gravity works," he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. "Anything else we have to take our chances with.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“This was the evening of the last day of Gordon Way's life”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Context: This was the evening of the last day of Gordon Way's life … The weather forecast hadn't mentioned that, of course, that wasn't the job of the weather forecast, but then his horoscope had been pretty misleading as well. It had mentioned an unusual amount of planetary activity in his sign and had urged him to differentiate between what he thought he wanted and what he actually needed, and suggested that he should tackle emotional or work problems with determination and complete honesty, but had inexplicably failed to mention that he would be dead before the day was out.

“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“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.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He felt like an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left in the sun to dry.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“Believe me, it is a great deal better to find cast-iron proof that you're innocent than to languish in a cell hoping that the police---who already think you're guilty---will find it for you.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Speech http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/index.html at Digital Biota 2 http://www.cyberbiology.org/, Cambridge, UK, (1998)
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Context: There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.

“The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“That was it. That was really it. She knew that she had told herself that that was it only seconds earlier, but this was now the final real ulimate it.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

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