Source note: The quote is sometimes cited to Adams’ best-known work, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While the cited lines do not appear in this work, Mostly Harmless was published in a 1996 Adams “Omnibus edition” along with Hitchhiker’s Guide and other works.

[Source: Random House ISBN 0-517-14925-7 – New York, NY: Wing Books – quote appears on pages 718-719 of this edition.]

Extended excerpt: “The thing they wouldn’t be expecting him to do was to be there in the first place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” (pp. 718-719)

Source: Library – Mostly Harmless (1992) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-517-57740-2

Extended excerpt: [Non-fiction. In this excerpt, Adams is describing the kakapo: a large, flightless, and nocturnal New Zealand bird that tends to freeze in the face of danger. Adams & Carwardine were traveling the world for a BBC radio series on endangered species.]

“The millennia crawl by pretty bloody slowly while natural selection sifts its way through generation after generation, favouring the odd aberrant kakapo that’s a little twitchier than its contemporaries till the species as a whole finally gets the idea. It would all be cut short in a moment if one of them could say, “When you see one of those things with whiskers and little bitey teeth, run like hell.” On the other hand, 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.” (p. 109)

Source: Library – Last Chance to See… (1990) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-773-724540

Extended excerpt: [From a tribute by friend & fellow author Richard Dawkins, published shortly after Adams’ death in 2001.]

“He laughed at himself with equal good humour. At, for example, his epic bouts of writer’s block (“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by”) when, according to legend, his publisher and book agent would lock him in a hotel room, with no telephone and nothing to do but write, releasing him only for supervised walks.”

Source link: “A Lament for Douglas Adams” (13 May 2001) The Guardian, online via The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/may/14/books.booksnews

Source note: Dawkins’ essay was also reprinted as a posthumous epilogue in the 26 April 2005 edition of Adam’s The Salmon of Doubt.

Extended excerpt: [Fictional dialogue between characters ‘Kate’ and ‘Dirk’]

“What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? ‘Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

“I reject that entirely,” said Dirk sharply. “The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? You instinct is to say, ‘Yes, but he or she simply wouldn’t do that.’” (p.132)

Source: Library – The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-773-722297

Extended excerpt: [Fictional dialogue: characters ‘Arthur Dent’ & ‘Ford Prefect’]:

“Three pints?” said Arthur. “At lunchtime?”

The man next to Ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

“Very deep,” said Arthur, “you should send that in to the Reader’s Digest. They’ve got a page for people like you.” (p. 24)

Source: Library – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-517-542099