## Metadata - Author: [[Douglas Adams]] - Full Title: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Category: #books ## Highlights - there is a huge difference between disliking somebody—maybe even disliking them a lot—and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire. It was a difference which kept the vast majority of the population alive from day to day. ([Location 2336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIN78A&location=2336)) - “Yes,” he said with a sigh, “but just—just tell me—” he flicked at the piece of paper with his fingertips—“what do you think of this, then?” “Well, I think it’s childish,” said Janice Pearce frankly. “But—but—but!” said Dirk, thumping the table in frustration, “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.” “Then why don’t you go and ask one?” “Thank you, Miss Pearce,” said Dirk reaching for his hat. “Once again you have rendered me an inestimable service for which I am profoundly grateful.” ([Location 2958](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIN78A&location=2958)) - “Ah,” said Dirk, “it is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto nonexistent 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. ([Location 3171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIN78A&location=3171)) - Dirk, what the hell is happening? Where are we?” “We are four billion years in the past,” said Reg in a shaking voice. “Please don’t ask me why it is that the phone works when we are anywhere in the Universe other than where it’s actually connected, that’s a matter you will have to take up with British Telecom, but—” “Damn and blast British Telecom,” shouted Dirk, the words coming easily from force of habit. ([Location 4008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIN78A&location=4008))