Quotes

I remembered something like "the eyes still looked like asking if, whatever it was the universe was doing to him, would it please stop doing it". Douglas Adams, but ... where, what exactly? Some googling shows that the correct fragment was from "So long, and thanks for all the fish": "Only the eyes still said that whatever it was the Universe thought it was doing to him, he would still like it please to stop."

 I can't remember why I thought the best book was "Hitch Hiker´s Guide to the Galaxy"; simply thumbing through SLATFATF has made me want to read it again. Perhaps it was the most... humane of the lot. The love story was so touching. The descriptions of the fish bowl, of how Arthur sensed the strangeness of the new Earth. And Fenchurch's disappearance was so… suddenly cruel.

 I love so much Adams' style. Just recenty finished (finally!) "Thief of time" by Pratchett, and tried to stop comparing him to Adams and let him stand by his own rights. He can, he's good, he's funny, even interesting sometimes. But he is also artificial, he feels like he actively wants to be funny and works hard to be, and while usually he manages to… Adams just overwhelms you into awe and submission, as if it just had to happen.

Just remembered I started collecting his quotes years ago. I started with post-its in one of the books; had to switch to pieces of post-its because there were too many of them, usually various in the same page; and finally had to stop before I finished the book, since it made no sense. The whole book needed to be re-read. It was "The Restaurant at the End of The Universe", I think.

 I wonder how much of my own style comes from Adams. After all, he was the most important cause for me to finally learn English. But I wonder how much I absorbed, and how much was already there. Like Faemino y Cansado in spanish, like the Monty Python. The problem is, that style wants to come out even when speaking, or when writing not necessarily humorous prose…

Anyway, there was already a quote from Terry Pratchett that imprinted me hugely:

In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning
one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: 

"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?" 

Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!" 

And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

Interestingly, that quote has already put me on odds (directly or indirectly) with a couple of Aikido teachers. Which validates Pratchett, of course. And makes me want to pay more attention to bullshido.com ...