

Zbogom, i hvala za svu tu ribu!

Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxiate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds, of course.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

I want to make a headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let¡s call it my stomach.

Arthur lay in startled stillness on the acceleration couch. He wasn't certain whether he had just got space-sickness or religion.

If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you are in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner, please, don't hesitate to get lost.

The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.

The Answer to the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything... Is... Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered. Yeah, said the voice from under the table, you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.

Who is this god person anyway?

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.

You come to me for advice, but you can't cope with anything you don't recognize. Hmmm. So we'll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh Well, business as usual , I suppose.

The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, thought you know that it probably will not be.

Why' is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it. The alphabet does not go 'A B C D What? When? How?' but it does go 'V W X Why? Z.

Being virtually killed by a virtual laser in a virtual space is just as effective as the real thing, because you are as dead as you think you are.

I have terrible periods of lack of confidence. I just don't believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view.

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with.

Don't blame you, said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.

Funny, how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does.

Life! Don't talk to me about life!

The waiter approached. 'Would you like to see the menu?' he said. 'Or would you like to meet the Dish of the Day?' 'Huh?' said Ford. 'Huh?' said Arthur. 'Huh?' said Trillian. 'That's cool,' said Zaphod. 'We'll meet the meat.

My capacity for happiness, he added, you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.

The actual building was old and dilapidated and remained standing more out of habit than from any inherent structural integrity.

Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our futures successes.

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.

The man was awake but not glad to be.

That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.

There are two things you should remember when dealing with parallel universes. One, they're not really parallel, and two, they're not really universes.

Pardon me for breathing, which I never do any way so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed.

I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer.
Longer Version:
I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.

The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood.

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

One is never alone with a rubber duck.

I think we have different value systems. --Arthur
Well mine's better. --Ford.

It all sounds rather naive and sentimental to be talking about children laughing and dancing and singing together when we all know perfectly well that what children do in real life is snarl and take drugs.

The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago,' continued Marvin.
Again the pause. '
Oh d--'
'And that was with a coffee machine.' He waited.

Siamese Cats have a way of staring at you. Those who have walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will know the expression.

Here, for whatever reason, is the world. And here it stays. With me on it.

It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smart-ass.

Please relax, said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, you are perfectly safe.

I don't go to mythical places with strange men.

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in; fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well! It must have been made to have me in it!

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%.

You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass.

How many roads must a man walk down?

The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is...42!

I will understand perfectly if you don't want to answer, but I will just keep pestering you until you do.

I don't want to die now! he yelled. I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it!

Shoeburyness (abs.n.) The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom.

Driving a Porsche in London is like bringing a Ming vase to a football game.

It's good to leave your room super-messy when you're away. Whoever tries to break into your room will thought it has already been ransacked.

Ow! My brains!

'If I ever meet myself,' said Zaphod, 'I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me.'

What is this? Some sort of galactic hyperhearse?

Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into his mind. It was very clear and very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His instinct was to resist them.

I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.

In an infinite Universe anything can happen.

Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.

A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.

So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight -- the locals wouldn't stand a chance.

As a result of all this hardship, dirt, thirst, and wombats, you would expect Australians to be a dour lot. Instead, they are genial, jolly, cheerful, and always willing to share a kind word with a stranger, unless they are an American.

Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?

I teleported home last night with Ron and Sid and Meg Ron stole Meggy's heart away and I got Sidney's leg.

I'm 48, which is a bit of a shock to me. Why only last year I thought I was a precocious young thing!

God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining.

The only thing nicer than a phone that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all) was six phones that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all).

I wrote an ad for Apple Computer: Macintosh -- We might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end.

And we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere … and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.

It was his subconscious which told him this -- that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain -- my own brain -- and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it.

A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.

Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don't quite work yet is just not worth it for end users, however much fun it is for nerds.

What I need... is a strong drink and a peer group.

What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo?
Quotes by Douglas Adams are featured in:
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