Life & Wisdom Quote by Douglas Adams

Adams lands the joke with the weary precision of someone who knows exactly how absurd his own coping mechanisms look from the outside. The line pretends to be a polite conversational complaint, but the reveal - "trees" - detonates the social contract underneath it. We expect a human reason for conversational difficulty: ideology, bad faith, generational drift. Adams swaps in a nonhuman audience, and suddenly the problem isn't disagreement; it's that human conversation has become so exhausting you'd rather talk to something guaranteed not to interrupt, argue, or demand a coherent self.

The humor is deadpan, but the subtext is anxious. Talking to trees reads like pastoral serenity until you realize it's also withdrawal: a gentle confession of isolation masquerading as whimsy. It's the classic Adams move - science-fictional absurdity used to smuggle in a mood. Trees are patient, silent, ancient; they're also a perfect foil for modern chatter, which he often treats as loud, self-important noise. If your recent "conversations" have been with trees, you're implicitly admitting that people have become either unbearable or unsafe, emotionally speaking.

Contextually, this fits Adams's broader distrust of human systems and postures. His work loves to puncture the idea that we're rational masters of our world; here, he punctures the idea that our relationships are stable, too. The line also flatters the listener in a backhanded way: you're now being treated as a rare, difficult exception to a life of chosen quiet. It's funny because it's extreme, and it's sharp because the extreme feels plausible.