Credited to Adams in print since at least 1994, and entirely in character — his lateness was legendary and documented. But no one has produced the occasion: the quotation researcher Barry Popik ↗ writes that it is not known when Adams first said the line, and every printing of it — the BBC’s obituary, Richard Dawkins’s lament, The Salmon of Doubt — reports it secondhand rather than reproducing something Adams wrote.
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by” Attributed to Douglas Adams (1952–2001). Credited to him in print since at least 1994, but no primary source has been found and the quotation researcher Barry Popik states it is not known when Adams first said it. The earliest citation Popik records reads "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by" (The Internet Yellow Pages, 1994, p. 261). The familiar wording appears in the BBC's obituary of 12 May 2001 and in The Salmon of Doubt (2002), both in reported form. Traced by Quotle.info, 9 Sep 2026.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Douglas Adams — English humorist, novelist and creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Theme: "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The documented trail
Attributed to
Douglas Adams (1952–2001)
Earliest printed credit
The Internet Yellow Pages (1994), p. 261
Familiar wording first recorded
BBC News obituary, 12 May 2001
Filed by Wikiquote under
The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
But he was never a punctual writer. Adams was once quoted as saying: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
BBC News, 12 May 2001
Note the BBC’s own hedge — “was once quoted as saying,” not “wrote” or “said in.” This is the day after Adams died, and it is the earliest printing of the familiar wording in Popik’s file. A pull-quote box on the same page renders it with a dash: “I love deadlines - I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
1994 — the earliest credit Popik records ↗: The Internet Yellow Pages by Harley Hahn and Rick Stout (Osborne McGraw-Hill), p. 261, printing “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.—Douglas Adams.” No source is given there, and Popik states it is not known when Adams first said the line.
1995–1999 — it circulates as office humour in slightly different words each time: a 1995 Usenet guide, a 1998 artists’ career book, a June 1998 USA Today piece that prints it with no name attached at all, and small-town newspaper columns in 1999. One 1999 forum post credits Dilbert; Popik finds no evidence for that ↗.
12 May 2001 — the day after Adams’s death, the BBC obituary ↗ prints the wording that would stick, framed as hearsay: “Adams was once quoted as saying.” Two days later Richard Dawkins uses the same wording in “Lament for Douglas” ↗, in parentheses beside the story of Adams being locked in a hotel room to write.
2002 — The Salmon of Doubt (Harmony Books) carries it, which is why quotation sites cite the book. The text Popik quotes from it is third person — “‘I love deadlines,’ he has said” — so the book is reporting the remark, not reproducing Adams’s own prose. Wikiquote ↗ nonetheless files the line under that book’s heading, without a page citation.
No work of first publication can be identified for this line, so no rights status can honestly be asserted — but it is emphatically not public domain. Every documented printing is modern: 1994 at the earliest, and the works that carry the familiar wording (the BBC’s 2001 obituary, Richard Dawkins’s lament, and The Salmon of Doubt, Macmillan/Harmony, 2002) are all in copyright, as is Adams’s own output. Treat reuse as restricted and attribute it as reported, not sourced.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets claimed, and what holds
Nothing here overturns the Adams credit. But three things get asserted about this line that the documents do not support.
Wrong sourceThe Salmon of Doubt (2002) reported, not written
The book is where most quotation sites send you, and Wikiquote files the line under that heading. But the text Popik records from it reads “‘I love deadlines,’ he has said” — third person. That is the posthumous collection quoting a remark, not printing a sentence Adams composed. Adams died in 2001; the book appeared the year after.
✕
Wrong wordingthe “fly by” version older
The wording you are reading is the one that took hold after May 2001. The versions printed in the 1990s run “I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by” and “go flying by” — see Popik’s dated citations ↗. Neither form has a located origin.
✓Adams almost certainly said something very like this, more than once, and his friends repeated it as his. What no one has produced — not Wikiquote, not Quote Investigator, not Popik ↗ — is the occasion.
Context
The joke fits. The paper trail doesn’t reach him.
Adams earned this line whether or not he said it. The lateness was real, sustained and on the record: with the manuscript of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish weeks from its due date and only 25 pages written, his publisher locked him in a hotel suite ↗ with Pan Books’ editorial director Sonny Mehta until it was done. Richard Dawkins, who knew him, set the deadlines joke directly beside that legend in the lament he wrote days after Adams died ↗.
The trouble is that the line’s documented history runs the wrong way. Barry Popik’s citation file opens in 1994 — in a book about the internet, credited to Adams, with no source — and then the saying spreads through office-humour lists and small-town newspaper columns in the late 1990s, sometimes with no name attached at all. When the BBC printed it in his obituary on 12 May 2001 it hedged: “Adams was once quoted as saying.” When it reached The Salmon of Doubt the following year, it arrived in the third person — “he has said” — which is a book reporting a remark, not an author writing a sentence.
Every printing of the line reports it. None of them witnesses it.
Why two different wordings are in circulation
The wording most people search for — “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by” — is the one the BBC used on 12 May 2001 ↗, the one Dawkins used two days later, and the one Wikiquote carries. It is the wording that stuck once Adams died.
The earlier printed versions read differently. Popik’s 1994 citation has “I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”; a 1995 computing guide has “I like deadlines; I especially like the sound they make as they go whooshing by”; the late-1990s newspaper versions have “I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.” A remark passed along by ear drifts like this. A sentence copied from a page does not.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1952–2001 · English humorist, novelist and creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) turned a 1978 BBC radio serial into The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, then into novels, a television series, a computer game and a posthumous film. He also wrote the two Dirk Gently novels, co-wrote The Meaning of Liff and Last Chance to See, and scripted Doctor Who. His difficulty finishing anything on time was not a pose: Wikipedia records that with the manuscript of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish weeks from due and only 25 pages written, he was locked in a hotel suite with Pan Books’ editorial director Sonny Mehta until it was finished.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Best available documentation
Barry Popik, “‘I love deadlines; I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by’,” barrypopik.com, June 6, 2012 — earliest credit recorded there: Harley Hahn and Rick Stout, The Internet Yellow Pages (Berkeley, CA: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1994), 261, in the wording “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” The familiar wording appears in BBC News, “So long, and thanks for all the books,” May 12, 2001, and in Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (New York: Harmony Books, 2002), both in reported form. No primary source for Adams saying it has been identified.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-love-deadlines-i-love-the-whooshing-noise-they-make-as/