## Metadata - Author: [[Douglas Adams]] - Full Title: Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Category: #books ## Highlights - The room was not a room to elevate the soul. Louis XIV, to pick a name at random, would not have liked it, would have found it not sunny enough, and insufficiently full of mirrors. He would have desired someone to pick up the socks, put the records away, and maybe burn the place down. Michelangelo would have been distressed by its proportions, which were neither lofty nor shaped by any noticeable inner harmony or symmetry, other than that all parts of the room were pretty much equally full of old coffee mugs, shoes and brimming ashtrays, most of which were now sharing their tasks with each other. The walls were painted in almost precisely that shade of green which Raffaello Sanzio would have bitten off his own right hand at the wrist rather than use, and Hercules, on seeing the room, would probably have returned half an hour later armed with a navigable river. It was, in short, a dump, and was likely to remain so for as long as it remained in the custody of Mr. Svlad, or “Dirk,” Gently, né Cjelli. ([Location 323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIDVM2&location=323)) - the malevolent incompetence of the world, ([Location 342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIDVM2&location=342)) - I am a private detective. I am paid to be inquisitive and presumptuous. Not as often or copiously as I would wish, but I am nevertheless inquisitive and presumptuous on a professional basis.” “How sad. I think it’s much more fun being inquisitive and presumptuous as a hobby. So you are a professional while I am merely an amateur of Olympic standard. You don’t look like a private detective.” “No private detective looks like a private detective. That’s one of the first rules of private detection.” “But if no private detective looks like a private detective, how does a private detective know what it is he’s supposed not to look like? Seems to me there’s a problem there.” “Yes, but it’s not one that keeps me awake at nights,” said Dirk in exasperation. “Anyway, I am not as other private detectives. My methods are holistic and, in a very proper sense of the word, chaotic. I operate by investigating the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.” ([Location 1249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIDVM2&location=1249)) - “Every particle in the universe,” continued Dirk, warming to his subject and beginning to stare a bit, “affects every other particle, however faintly or obliquely. Everything interconnects with everything. The beating of a butterfly’s wings in China can affect the course of an Atlantic hurricane. If I could interrogate this table leg in a way that made sense to me, or to the table leg, then it could provide me with the answer to any question about the universe. I could ask anybody I liked, chosen entirely by chance, any random question I cared to think of, and their answer, or lack of it, would in some way bear upon the problem to which I am seeking a solution. It is only a question of knowing how to interpret it. Even you, whom I have met entirely by chance, probably know things that are vital to my investigation, if only I knew what to ask you, which I don’t, and if only I could be bothered to, which I can’t.” ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIDVM2&location=1257)) - He stepped out onto the street, where a passing eagle swooped out of the sky at him, nearly forcing him into the path of a cyclist, who cursed and swore at him from a moral high ground that cyclists alone seem able to inhabit. ([Location 1286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIDVM2&location=1286)) - Kate was looking for other ways of casually introducing the subject of recent admissions, but was forced to concede to herself that you cannot attempt to introduce the same subject three times in a row without beginning to lose that vital quality of casualness. ([Location 1502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AYIDVM2&location=1502))