Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
Douglas AdamsRead
He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassis' underwear, the piles of Sqornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of cornflakes. But he couldn't, and he didn't feel safe.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote illustrates the absurdity of the situation and the character's unease in an unpredictable environment.
In this passage by Douglas Adams, the protagonist's sense of safety is humorously depicted through an absurd and chaotic collection of items. The presence of everyday objects, like cornflakes, amidst bizarre and strange companions symbolizes a desire for familiarity and normalcy, contrasting with the overwhelming oddness around him, thereby highlighting feelings of anxiety and discomfort in the face of the unknown.
Themes
AbsurditySafetyChaosHumorFamiliarity
In practice
Example use cases
A comedian could use this quote to highlight the absurdities of modern life during a stand-up routine.
More from Douglas Adams
All quotes →"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water."
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Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. [...] Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
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Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.
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What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is to recalibrate ourselves so that we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.
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We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
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