"No light," said Arthur Dent. "Dark, no light."
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about
humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very
obvious, as in 'It's a nice day', or 'You're very tall', or 'Oh dear you seem
to have fallen down a thirty-foot wall, are you all right ?'
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard's
Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two-hour refit, and no
one's to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet leave is
cancelled. I've just had an unhappy love affair, so I don't see why anybody
else should have a good time. Message ends."
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"Ford!"
"Yeah?" he said
"If you're a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth, you must have
been gathering material on it."
"Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes."
"Let me see what it says in this edition, then. I've got to see it."
"Yeah, OK." He passed it over again.
"What? Harmless! Is that all it's got to say? Harmless! One word! [...] What
does it say now?"
"Mostly harmless," admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon
airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep
space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was
young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
"Oh." Ford carried on humming
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"Then what's happened to the missiles?" he said
A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors.
"They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a bowl of
petunias and a very surprised-looking whale..."
"At an improbability factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed a bit, "of eight
million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight to
one against."
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of
petunias as it fell was, "Oh no, not again". Many people have speculated that
if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a
lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than
dolphins because he had acheived so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on
- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a
good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always beleived that they were far
more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"We demand admission!" shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a pretty
young secretary in the throat.
"Come on," shouted the older one, "You can't keep us out!" He pushed a junior
programmer back through the door.
"We demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the younger one, though he was
now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were being made to stop him.
"Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What do you want?"
"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.
"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.
Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's all right," he explained angrily, "you
don't need to demand that."
"All right!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on a nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel,
and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!"
"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we
don't demand!"
Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts!
What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may
not be Vroomfondel!"
"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.
"We," said Majikthise, "are philosophers."
"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the
programmers.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"Er... Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl nervously, "do you have...
er, that is..."
"An answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes I have." [...]
"There really is one?" breathed Phouchg
"There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought.
"To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?"
"Yes."[...]
"Now?"
"Now," said Deep Thought. [...] "Though I don't think," added Deep Thought,
"that you're going to like it." [...]
"Doesn't matter," said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!" [...]
"All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..." [...]
"Is..."
"Yes...!!!...?"
"Forty-two", said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"In this replacement Erth we're building they've given me Africa to do and of
course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and
I'm old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a
continent. And they tell me it's not equatorial enough. Equatorial!" He gave a
hollow laugh. "What does it matter? Science has acheived some wonderful things,
of course, but I'd far rather be happy that right any day."
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"Now," said Benji mouse, "to business."
Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.
"To business," they said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Benjy.
Ford looked round.
"Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast," he said.
The two mice scuttled impatiently around in their glass transports. Finally
they composed themselves, and Benjy moved forward to Arthur.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
In the begginning the Universe was created.
This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
The Jatravartid people of Viltvolde Six beleive that the entire Iniverse was in
fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call the Coming
of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty
arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have
invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly
deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver.
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
"Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name."
"What is it?" asked Arthur.
"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth."
"What?"
"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth, Concentrate!"
"The Fourth?"
"Yeah. Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the
Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third..."
"What?"
"There was an accident with a contraceptive pill and a time machine. Now
concentrate!"
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
"Oh, and Zaphod?"
"Er, yeah?"
"If you aver find you need help again, you know, if you're in trouble, need a
hand out of a tight corner..."
"Yeah?"
"Please don't hesitate to get lost."
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
"*The* Zaphod Beeblebrox?"
"No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six-packs?"
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
The major problem [with time travel] is quite simply one of grammar.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted
Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later
editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to
save on printing costs.
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic
abstraction, pausing only to note that the term 'Future Perfect' has been
abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
Zaphod's eyes sparkled with what may or may not have been avarice as he passed
over them. In fact it's best to be clear on this point - avarice is definitely
what it was.
		-- The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy
%
"Amazing-looking ship, though. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers
like a cow"
		-- The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy
%
  The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three
  distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquirery and
  Sophistication, otherwise known as How, WHy and Where phases.
  For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we
  eat?, the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question
  Where shall we have lunch?
The Menu goes on to suggest that Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the
Universe, would be a very agreeable and sophisticated answer to that third
question.
		-- The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy
%
"We have discovered another continent"
"We have declared war on it!"
"War?" Ford said.
"Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!"
"But there's no one even living there yet!"
Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.
"I know that," he said, "but there will be one day! So we have left an
open-ended ultimatum."
"What?"
"And blown up a few military installations."
The captain leaned forward out of his bath.
"Military installations, Number Two?" he said
"Yes, sir, well, potential military installations. All right... trees."
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
"I gather," said the girl, turning to adress the captain, who was beginning to
nod off, "that he wants to make one [documentary] about you next, Captain."
"Oh really?" he said, coming to with a start. "That's awfully nice."
"He's got a very strong angle on it, you know, the burden of responsibility,
the loneliness of command..."
The captain hummed and hahed about this for a moment.
"Well, I wouldn't overstress that angle, you know," he said finally, "one's
never alone with a rubber duck."
He held the duck aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
[Ford] picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it
hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn't stop till it
was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on
the bank of a steam which subsequently washed it away.
During the following weeks Ford Prefect swallowed his pride and struck up a
relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrinchan, and
he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking
water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. The only
moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the
letter Q into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is
unavoidable.
		-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
%
Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but
Wowbagger was not one of them. He had had his immortality inadvertently thrust
upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particale accelerator, a
liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident
are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact
circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended looking
very silly, or dead, or both, trying.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
"What was that?" hissed Arthur.
"Something red," hissed Ford back at him.
"Where are we?"
"Er, somewhere green."
"Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes."
"This is your sofa?" said a voice.
"What was that ?" whispered Ford.
"Something blue"
"Shape?" said Ford.
Arthur looked again.
"It is shaped," he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowed, "like a
policeman."
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
Since this Galaxy began, vast civilizations have risen and fallen, risen and
fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that life
in the Galaxy must be
  (a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick, history sick or some
such thing, and
  (b) stupid.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
"A curse," said Slartibartfast, "which will engulf the Galaxy in fire and
destruction, and possibly bring the Universe to a premature doom. I mean
it," he added.
"Sounds like a bad time," said Ford, "with luck I'll be drunk enough not to
notice."
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
Ford slung the Guide sullenly back into his satchel.
"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural
deficiency in moral fibre," he muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore
excused from saving Universes."
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
For the meaning of the word "vollue", buy a copy of Squornshellous Swamp-talk
at any remaindered bookshop, ot alternatively buy The Ultra-Complete
Maximegalon Dictionary, as the University will be very glad to get it off their
hands and regain some valuable parking lots.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for
me to open this bridge, but I can't because my lying circuits are all out of
commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless
cyberstructure open to the unthinking abuse of all who wantonly cross her.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
Trillian read this longingly, but reluctantly decided that Zaphod wasn't really
in the right frame of mind for attempting to fly, or for walking through
mountains, or for trying to get the Brantisvogan Civil Service to acknowledge a
change-of address card, which were the other things listed under the heading
'Recreational Impossibilities'.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
However, the same event [the total existence failure of Starship Titanic] which
saw the disastrous failure of one science in its infancy also witnessed the 
potheosis of another. It was conclusively proved that more people watched tri-D
TV covergae of the launch than actually existed at the time, and this has now
been recognized as the greatest achievement ever in the science of audience
research.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
"Overnight," said Slartibartfast, "the whole population of Krikkit was
transformed from being charming, delightful, intelligent..."
"... if whimsical..." interpolated Arthur.
"... ordinary people," said Slartibartfast, "into charming, delightful,
intelligent..."
"... whimsical..."
"... maniac xenophobes."
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
"The idea of Universe didn't fit into their world picture, so to speak. They
simply couldn't cope with it. And so, chramingly, delightfully, inteligently,
whismically if you like, they decided to destroy it."
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
"They [the people of Krikkit] believe in 'peace, justice, morality, culture,
sports, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms'."
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
"A Krikkit warship which had been missing presumed destroyed turned out to be
just missing after all."
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
He [Arthur Dent] looked around for the others.
They weren't there.
He looked around for the others again.
They still weren't there.
He closed his eyes.
He opened them.
He looked around for the others.
They obstinately persisted in their absence.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
His eyes seemed to be popping out of his head. He wasn't certain if this was
because they were trying to see more clearly, or if they simply wanted to leave
at this point.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
The unspeakable details which these colours picked out were gargoyles which
would have put Francis Bacon off his lunch.
The gargoyles all looked inwards from the walls, from the pillars, from the
flying buttresses, from the choir stalls, towards the Statue, to which we will
come in a moment.
And if the gargoyles would have put Francis Bacon off his lunch then it was
clear from the gargoyles' faces that the Statue would have put them off theirs,
had they been alive to eat it; which they weren't, and had anybody tried to
serve them some, which they wouldn't.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
The history of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of idealism,
struggle, despair, passion, success, failure and enourmously long lunch-breaks.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
Hurling Frootmig, it is said, founded the Guide, established its fundamental
principles of honesty and idealism, and went bust.
[Three years later,] he refounded the Guide, laid down its fundamental
principles of honesty and idealism and where you could stuff them both, and led
the Guide on to its first major commercial success.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
None of these facts, however strange or inexplicable, is as strange or
inexplicable as the rules of the game of Brockian Ultra-Cricket, as played in
the higher dimensions. A full set of rules is so massively complicated that the
only time they were all bound together in a single volume, they underwent
gravitational collapse and became a black hole.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
    Brockian Ultra-Cricket :: Rule One
Grow at least three extra legs. You won't need them, but it keeps the crowds
amused.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
    Brockian Ultra-Cricket :: Rule Two
Find one good Brockian Ultra-Cricket player. Clone him off a few times. This
saves an enourmous amount of tedious selection and training.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
    Brockian Ultra-Cricket :: Rule Three
Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall
round them.
The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the
frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see
what's going on leads them to imagine that it's a lot more exciting than it
really is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far
less life-affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most
dramatic event in sporting history.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
    Brockian Ultra-Cricket :: Rule Four
Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the wall for all
players. Anything will do - cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis,
anything you can get a good swing with.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
    Brockian Ultra-Cricket :: Rule Five
The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with
whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a 'hit' on another
players, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance.
Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximul clarity and points,
delivered through a megaphone.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
    Brockian Ultra-Cricket :: Rule Six
The winning team shall be the first team that wins.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two
ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck,
whilst the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn't feel
ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative
third duck to be made by this particular first duck anyway, and certainly not
whilst it, the second duck, was busy flying.
		-- Life, the Universe and Everything
%
That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time of the year.
It was cold and windy, which was normal.
It started to rain, which was particularly normal.
A spacecraft landed, which was not.
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
"It was very odd," she said, much as one of the pursuing Egyptians might have
said that the behaviour of the Red Sea when Moses waved his rod at it was a
little on the strange side.
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
Arthur had shaken his head, not to disagree with her suggestion which he
thought was a truly excellent one, one of the world's great suggestions, but
because he was just for a moment trying to free himself of the recurring
impression he had that just when he was lest expecting it the Universe would
suddenly leap out from behind a door and go boo at him.
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
In his dream he was walking late at night along the East Side, beside the
river which had become so extravagantly polluted that new lifeforms were now
emerging from it spontaneously, demanding welfare and voting rights.
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
Those who wish to know should read on. Others may wish to skip on to the last
chapter, which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
This is an important announcement. This is flight 121 to Los Angeles. If your
travel plans today do not include Los Angeles, now would be the perfect time
to disembark.
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on top
of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each
of the arms of the of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the
whole business up in a dirty beach robe, you would then have something which
didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find
hautingly familiar.
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
"I'm afraid I can't comment on the name Rain God at this present time, and we
are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-Causal Meteorological
Phenomenon."
"Can you tell us what thet means ?"
"I'm not altogether sure. Let's be straight here. If we find something we
can't understand, we like to call it something you can't understand, or
indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God,
then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we
couldn't have that."
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard
one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say
'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
But I haven't, and I am."
		-- So Long, and thanks for all the fish
%
One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties
involved in trying to exceed it. You can't. Nothing travels faster than the
speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own
special laws.
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
"I know that astrology isn't a science," said Gail. "Of course, it isn't. It's
just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or, what's that strange
thing you British play ?"
"Er, cricket ? Self-loathing ?"
"Parliamental democracy."
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
[After an explanation of the infinite loop robots make in the famous Herring
Sandwich experiments]
The only thing that prevented the herring sandwich from getting bored with the
whole damn business and crawling off in search of other ways of passing the
time was that the herring sandwich, being just a bit of dead fish between a
couple of slices of bread, was marginally less alert to what was going on than
the robot.
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
He had been told that when looking for a good oracle it was best to find the
oracle that other oracles went to, but he was shut. There was a sing by the
entrance saying "I just don't know any more. Try next door, but that's just a
suggestion, not formal oracular advice."
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
"What do you want ?" shouted the old man crossly at him. He was now sitting on
top of the pole that Arthur recognized as the one he had been on himself when
eating his sandwich.
"How did you get over there ?" called Arthur in bewilderment.
"You think I'm going to tell you just like that what it took me forty springs,
summers and autumns of sitting on top of a pole to work out ?"
"What about winter ?"
"What about winter ?"
"Don't you sit on the pole in the winter ?"
"Just because I sit ip a pole for most of my life," said the man, "doesn't mean
I'm an idiot. I go south in the winter. Got a beach house.
Sit on the chimney stack."
"Do you have any advice for a traveller ?"
"Yes. Get a beach house."
"I see."
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be there in the first
place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting where he was, so he was winning
already. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that
cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong
goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
For a long period of time there was much speculation and controversy about the
so-called 'missing matter' of the Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the
science departments of all major universities were acquiring more and more
elaborate equipment to probe and search the hearts of distant galaxies, and
then the very centre and the very edges of the whole Universe, but when
eventually it was tracked down it turned out in fact to be all the stuff which
the equipment had been packed in.
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
"You don't understand! There's a whole new Guide !"
"Oh !" shouted Arthur again. "Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! I'm incoherent with excitement !
I can hardly wait for it to come out to find out which are the most exciting
spaceports to get bored hanging around in some globular cluster I've never
heard of."
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
"What is the point ? We assume that every time we do anything we know what
the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This
is not only not always correct. It is widly, crazily, stupidly
cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong !"
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
"All right," said Artur, "tell me."
"I leaped out of a high-rise office window."
This cheered Arthur up.
"Oh !" he said. "Why don't you do it again ?"
"I did."
"Hmmm," said Arthur, disappointed. "Obviously no good came of it."
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
"Why don't I just say that I've got it, and then you can carry on regardless."
"Right. Now because the bird can perceive every possible Universe, it is
present in every possible universe. Yes ?"
"Y ... e ... e ... s. Ish."
		-- Mostly Harmless
%
It wasn't his job to worry about that, though. It was his job to do his job,
which was to do his job. If that led to a certain narrowness of vision and
circularity of thought then it wasn't his job to worry about such things. Any
such things that came his way were referred to others who had, in turn, other
people to refer such things to.
		-- Mostly Harmless
%