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From Another Direction He Felt The Sensation Of Being A Sheep Startled By A Flying Saucer, But It Was Virtually Indistinguishable From The Feeling Of Being A Sheep Startled By Anything Else It Ever Encountered, For They Were Creatures Who Learned Very Little On Their Journey Through Life, And Would Be Startled To See The Sun Rising In The Morning, And Astonished By All The Green Stuff In The Fields.

-Douglas Adams

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From Another Direction He

Douglas Adams

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From Another Direction He Felt The Sensation Of Being A Sheep Startled By A Flying Saucer, But It Was Virtually Indistinguishable From The Feeling Of Being A Sheep Startled By Anything Else It Ever Encountered, For They Were Creatures Who Learned Very Little On Their Journey Through Life, And Would Be Startled To See The Sun Rising In The Morning, And Astonished By All The Green Stuff In The Fields.

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I Am Terribly Proud Of-i Was Born In Cambridge In 1952 And My Initials Are Dna!

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.

Stomp Stomp. Whirr. Pleased To Be Of Service. Shut Up. Thank You. Stomp Stomp Stomp Stomp Stomp. Whirr. Thank You For Making A Simple Door Very Happy. Hope Your Diodes Rot. Thank You. Have A Nice Day. Stomp Stomp Stomp Stomp. Whirr. It Is My Pleasure To Open For You... Zark Off. ...and My Satisfaction To Close Again With The Knowledge Of A Job Well Done. I Said Zark Off. Thank You For Listening To This Message.

Don't Blame You," Said Marvin And Counted Five Hundred And Ninety-seven Thousand Million Sheep Before Falling Asleep Again A Second Later.

Having Not Said Anything The First Time, It Was Somehow Even More Difficult To Broach The Subject The Second Time Around.

Woking (vb.) To Enter The Kitchen With The Precise Determination To Perform Something Only To Forget What It Is Just Before You Do It.

The Last Ever Dolphin Message Was Misinterpreted As A Surprisingly Sophisticated Attempt To Do A Double-backwards-somersault Through A Hoop Whilst Whistling The 'star Spangled Banner', But In Fact The Message Was This: So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.

What Is This? Some Sort Of Galactic Hyperhearse?

Zaphod Beeblebrox

If God Allows Proof That He Exists He Robs People Of Faith And Without Faith What Is God? Nothing.

The Somebody Else's Problem Field Is Much Simpler And More Effective, And What's More Can Be Run For Over A Hundred Years On A Single Torch Battery. This Is Because It Relies On People's Natural Disposition Not To See Anything They Don't Want To, Weren't Expecting, Or Can't Explain.

Dirk Turned On The Car Wipers, Which Grumbled Because They Didn't Have Quite Enough Rain To Wipe Away, So He Turned Them Off Again. Rain Quickly Speckled The Windscreen. He Turned On The Wipers Again, But They Still Refused To Feel That The Exercise Was Worthwhile, And Scraped And Squeaked In Protest.

The Future Of Computer Power Is Pure Simplicity.

Imagine" He Said, "never Even Thinking, 'we Are Alone,' Simply Because It Has Never Occurred To You To Think That There's Any Other Way To Be.

Would You Like Me To Go And Stick My Head In A Bucket Of Water?

Trillian Had Come To Suspect That The Main Reason [zaphood] Had Had Such A Wild And Successful Life Was That He Never Really Understood The Significance Of Anything He Did.

If You Stick A Babel Fish In Your Ear You Can Instantly Understand Anything Said To You In Any Form Of Language.

Nobleness Was One Word For Making A Fuss About The Trivial Inevitabilities Of Life, But There Were Others.

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 And Repair.

And The Most Interesting Natural Structure? A Giant, Two-thousand-mile-long Fish In Orbit Around Jupiter, According To A Reliable Report In The Weekly World News. The Photograph Was Very Convincing, And I'm Only Surprised That More-reputable Journals Like New Scientist, Or Even Just The Sun, Haven't Followed Up With More Details. We Should Be Told.

Assumptions Are What We Don't Know We Are Making

Space Is Unimaginably Big.

If Somebody Thinks They're A Hedgehog, Presumably You Just Give 'em A Mirror And A Few Pictures Of Hedgehogs And Tell Them To Sort It Out For Themselves.

Technology Is A Word That Describes Something That Doesn't Work Yet.

Far Out In The Uncharted Backwaters Of The Unfashionable End Of The Western Spiral Arm Of The Galaxy Lies A Small Unregarded Yellow Sun. Orbiting This At A Distance Of Roughly Ninety-two Million Miles Is An Utterly Insignificant Little Blue Green Planet Whose Ape-descended Life Forms Are So Amazingly Primitive That They Still Think Digital Watches Are A Pretty Neat Idea.

I Have Always Been Absurdly, Ridiculously Tall. To Give You An Idea- When We Went On School Trips To Interesting And Improving Places, The Form-master Wouldn't Say "meet Under The Clock Tower," Or "meet Under The War Memorial," But "meet Under Adams.

Lord, Lord, Lord. Protect Me From The Consequences Of The Above Prayer.

For A Moment, Nothing Happened. Then, After A Second Or So, Nothing Continued To Happen.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

David Attenborough Has Said That Bali Is The Most Beautiful Place In The World, But He Must Have Been There Longer Than We Were, And Seen Different Bits, Because Most Of What We Saw In The Couple Of Days We Were There Sorting Out Our Travel Arrangements Was Awful. It Was Just The Tourist Area, I.e. That Part Of Bali Which Has Been Made Almost Exactly The Same As Everywhere Else In The World For The Sake Of People Who Have Come All This Way To See Bali.

Goosnargh," Said Ford Prefect, Which Was A Special Betelgeusian Word He Used When He Knew He Should Say Something But Didn't Know What It Should Be.

Mc Donalds He Thought. There's No Longer Any Such Thing As A Mc Donalds Hamburger. He Passed Out. When He Came Around Seconds Later He Found He Was Sobbing For His Mother.

Yes It Is,' Said The Professor. 'wait—' He Motioned To Richard, Who Was About To Go Out Again And Investigate— 'let It Be. It Won't Be Long.' Richard Stared In Disbelief. 'you Say There's A Horse In Your Bathroom, And All You Can Do Is Stand There Naming Beatles Songs?' The Professor Looked Blankly At Him.

He Felt That His Whole Life Was Some Kind Of Dream And He Sometimes Wondered Whose It Was And Whether They Were Enjoying It.

One Of The Most Important Things You Learn From The Internet Is That There Is No 'them' Out There. It’s Just An Awful Lot Of 'us.'

What Do You Get If You Multiply Six By Nine?" "six By Nine. Forty Two." "that's It. That's All There Is." "i Always Thought Something Was Fundamentally Wrong With The Universe

Solutions Nearly Always Come From The Direction You Least Expect, Which Means There's No Point Trying To Look In That Direction Because It Won't Be Coming From There.

There Is A Piece Of Me That Likes To Fondly Imagine My Maverick And Rebellious Nature, But, More Accurately, I Like To Have A Nice And Cosy Institution That I Can Rub Up Against A Little Bit.

Even The Evil-looking Bird Perched On A Rod In The Bar Had Stopped Screeching Out The Names And Addresses Of Local Contract Killers, Which Was A Service It Provided For Free.

Anything That Thinks Logically Can Be Fooled By Something Else That Thinks At Least As Logically As It Does.

One Of The Problems Of Taking Things Apart And Seeing How They Work - Supposing You're Trying To Find Out How A Cat Works--you Take That Cat Apart To See How It Works, What You've Got In Your Hands Is A Non-working Cat. The Cat Wasn't A Sort Of Clunky Mechanism That Was Susceptible To Our Available Tools Of Analysis.

How Can I Tell," Said The Man, "that The Past Isn't A Fiction Designed To Account For The Discrepancy Between My Immediate Physical Sensations And My State Of Mind?

Arthur Felt Happy. He Was Terribly Pleased That The Day Was For Once Working Out So Much According To Plan. Only Twenty Minutes Ago He Had Decided He Would Go Mad, And Now Here He Was Already Chasing A Chesterfield Sofa Across The Fields Of Prehistoric Earth.

When You're Cruising Down The Road In The Fast Lane And You Lazily Sail Past A Few Hard-driving Cars And Are Feeling Pretty Pleased With Yourself And Then Accidently Change Down From Fourth To First Instead Of Third Thus Making Your Engine Leap Out Of Your Hood In A Rather Ugly Mess, It Tends To Throw You Off Stride In Much The Same Way That This Remark Threw Ford Prefect Off His.

My Universe Is My Eyes And My Ears. Anything Else Is Hearsay.

Bypasses Are Devices That Allow Some People To Dash From Point A To Point B Very Fast While Other People Dash From Point B To Point A Very Fast. People Living At Point C, Being A Point Directly In Between, Are Often Given To Wonder What's So Great About Point A That So Many People From Point B Are So Keen To Get There And What's So Great About Point B That So Many People From Point A Are So Keen To Get There. They Often Wish That People Would Just Once And For All Work Out Where The Hell They Wanted To Be.

The Macintosh May Only Have 10% Of The Market, But It Is Clearly The Top 10%.

I Come In Peace...take Me To Your Lizard.

Here, For Whatever Reason, Is The World. And Here It Stays. With Me On It.

When People You Greatly Admire Appear To Be Thinking Deep Thoughts, They Probably Are Thinking About Lunch.

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.

A Life That Is Burdened With Expectations Is A Heavy Life. Its Fruit Is Sorrow And Disappointment.

So, The World Is Fine. We Don’t Have To Save The World—the World Is Big Enough To Look After Itself. What We Have To Be Concerned About, Is Whether Or Not The World We Live In, Will Be Capable Of Sustaining Us In It. That’s What We Need To Think About.

Science Fiction That's Just About People Wandering Around In Space Ships Shooting Each Other With Ray Guns Is Very Dull. I Like It When It Enables You To Do Fairly Radical Reinterpretations Of Human Experience, Just To Show All The Different Interpretations That Can Be Put On Apparently Fairly Simple And Commonplace Events. That I Find Fun.

In The End, It Was The Sunday Afternoons He Couldn't Cope With, And That Terrible Listlessness That Starts To Set In About 2:55, When You Know You've Taken All The Baths That You Can Usefully Take That Day, That However Hard You Stare At Any Given Paragraph In The Newspaper You Will Never Actually Read It, Or Use The Revolutionary New Pruning Technique It Describes, And That As You Stare At The Clock The Hands Will Move Relentlessly On To Four O'clock, And You Will Enter The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul.

Fiordland, A Vast Tract Of Mountainous Terrain That Occupies The South-west Corner Of South Island, New Zealand, Is One Of The Most Astounding Pieces Of Land Anywhere On God's Earth, And One's First Impulse, Standing On A Cliff Top Surveying It All, Is Simply To Burst Into Spontaneous Applause.

Space Is Big. Really Big. You Just Won't Believe How Vastly, Hugely, Mind-bogglingly Big It Is. I Mean, You May Think It's A Long Way Down The Road To The Chemist, But That's Just Peanuts To Space.

The World Is A Thing Of Utter Inordinate Complexity And Richness And Strangeness That Is Absolutely Awesome. I Mean The Idea That Such Complexity Can Arise Not Only Out Of Such Simplicity, But Probably Absolutely Out Of Nothing, Is The Most Fabulous Extraordinary Idea. And Once You Get Some Kind Of Inkling Of How That Might Have Happened ' It's Just Wonderful. And . . . The Opportunity To Spend 70 Or 80 Years Of Your Life In Such A Universe Is Time Well Spent As Far As I Am Concerned.

She Had What It Took: Great Hair, A Profound Understanding Of Strategic Lip Gloss, The Intelligence To Understand The World And A Tiny Secret Interior Deadness Which Meant She Didn’t Care.

R Is A Velocity Of Measure, Defined As A Reasonable Speed Of Travel That Is Consistent With Health, Mental Well-being, And Not Being More Than, Say, Five Minutes Late. It Is Therefore Clearly As Almost Infinite Variable Figure According To Circumstances, Since The First Two Factors Vary Not Only With Speed As An Absolute, But Also With Awareness Of The Third Factor. Unless Handled With Tranquility, This Equation Can Result In Considerable Stress, Ulcers, And Even Death.

When You Walk Through The Storm, Hold Your Head High And Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark! At The End Of The Storm Is A Golden Sky And The Sweet Song Of The Lark. Walk On Through The Wind Walk On Through The Rain Though Your Dreams Be Tossed & Blown Walk On, Walk On, With Hope In Your Heart And You'll Never Walk Alone!

The Hardest Assumption To Challenge Is The One You Don't Even Know You Are Making.

One Always Overcompensates For Disabilities. I'm Thinking Of Having My Entire Body Surgically Removed.

There Are Some People You Like Immediately, Some Whom You Think You Might Learn To Like In The Fullness Of Time, And Some That You Simply Want To Push Away From You With A Sharp Stick.

Ghastly," Continued Marvin, "it All Is. Absolutely Ghastly. Just Don't Even Talk About It. Look At This Door," He Said, Stepping Through It. The Irony Circuits Cut In To His Voice Modulator As He Mimicked The Style Of The Sales Brochure. " 'all The Doors In His Spaceship Have A Cheerful And Sunny Disposition. It Is Their Pleasure To Open For You, And Their Satisfaction To Close Again With The Knowledge Of A Job Well Done.' " As The Door Closed Behind Them It Became Apparent That It Did Indeed Have A Satisfied Sighlike Quality To It. "hummmmmmmyummmmmmmah!" It Said.

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.

The Bird That Would Soar Above The Plain Of Tradition And Prejudice Must Have Strong Wings.

Was There A Reason Behind It? There Would Be No Point In Asking Zaphod, He Never Appeared To Have A Reason For Anything He Did At All: He Had Turned Unfathomability Into An Art Form. He Attacked Everything In Life With A Mixture Of Extraordinary Genius And Naive Incompetence And It Was Often Difficult To Tell Which Was Which.

Ford Prefect Suppressed A Little Giggle Of Evil Satisfaction, Realized That He Had No Reason To Suppress It, And Laughed Out Loud, A Wicked Laugh.

It Is Most Gratifying," It Said, "that Your Enthusiasm For Our Planet Continues Unabated, And So We Would Like To Assure You That The Guided Missiles Currently Converging With Your Ship Are Part Of A Special Service We Extend To All Of Our Most Enthusiastic Clients, And The Fully Armed Nuclear Warheads Are Of Course Merely A Courtesy Detail. We Look Forward To Your Custom In Future Lives ... Thank You.

He Hoped And Prayed That There Wasn't An Afterlife. Then He Realized There Was A Contradiction Involved Here And Merely Hoped That There Wasn't An Afterlife.

He Had Extracted Himself From The Cambridge One-way System By The Usual Method, Which Involved Going Round And Round It Faster And Faster Until He Achieved A Sort Of Escape Velocity And Flew Off At A Tangent In A Random Direction, Which He Was Now Trying To Identify And Correct For.

A Mobile Phone Needs A Manual In The Way That A Teacup Doesn't

If There's Anything More Important Than My Ego Around, I Want It Caught And Shot Now.

If Somebody Votes For A Party That You Don't Agree With, You're Free To Argue About It As Much As You Like. ... But On The Other Hand, If Somebody Says, 'i Mustn't Move A Light Switch On A Saturday,' You Say, 'fine, I Respect That.'

The Film Project Has Been “twenty Years Of Constipation,” And He Likens The Hollywood Process To “trying To Grill A Steak By Having A Succession Of People Coming Into The Room And Breathing On It.”

The Complexities Of Cause And Effect Defy Analysis.

Cause And Effect

I Think The Problem, To Be Quite Honest With You, Is That You've Never Actually Known What The Question Is.

Being Offended By Things Is The World's Big Hobby At The Moment. It's Almost Taken Over From Wearing Goatee Beards.

There Is A Feeling Which Persists In England That Making A Sandwich Interesting, Attractive, Or In Any Way Pleasant To Eat Is Something Sinful That Only Foreigners Do.

Yes, I Think I Use The Term Radical Rather Loosely, Just For Emphasis. If You Describe Yourself As Atheist Some People Will Say, Don't You Mean Agnostic? I Have To Reply That I Really Do Mean Atheist, I Really Do Not Believe That There Is A God; In Fact, I Am Convinced That There Is Not A God (a Subtle Difference). I See Not A Shred Of Evidence To Suggest That There Is One...etc., Etc. It's Easier To Say That I Am A Radical Atheist, Just To Signal That I Really Mean It, Have Thought About It A Great Deal And That It's An Opinion I Hold Seriously.

I Watched The Gorilla's Eyes Again, Wise And Knowing Eyes, And Wondered About This Business Of Trying To Teach Apes Language. Our Language. Why? There Are Many Members Of Our Own Species Who Live In And With The Forest And Know It And Understand It. We Don't Listen To Them. What Is There To Suggest We Would Listen To Anything An Ape Could Tell Us? Or That It Would Be Able To Tell Us Of Its Life In A Language That Hasn't Been Born Of That Life? I Thought, Maybe It Is Not That They Have Yet To Gain A Language, It Is That We Have Lost One.

Deep In The Fundamental Heart Of Mind And Universe There Is A Reason.

The Longest And Most Destructive Party Ever Held Is Now Into Its Fourth Generation And Still No One Shows Any Signs Of Leaving. The Problem Of When The Drink Is Going To Run Out Is, However, Going To Have To Be Faced One Day. The Planet Over Which They Are Floating Is No Longer The Planet It Was When They First Started Floating Over It. It Is In Bad Shape

If You Try And Take A Cat Apart To See How It Works, The First Thing You Have On Your Hands Is A Nonworking Cat.

Earth: Mostly Harmless

Any Man Who Can Hitch The Length And Breadth Of The Galaxy, Rough It, Slum It, Struggle Against Terrible Odds, Win Through, And Still Know Where His Towel Is Is Clearly A Man To Be Reckoned With.

Presidents Don't Have Power. Their Job Is To Draw Attention Away From It.

If They Don’t Keep Exercising Their Lips, He Thought, Their Brains Start Working.

What A Wonderfully Exciting Cough,' Said The Little Man, Quite Startled By It, 'do You Mind If I Join You?' And With That He Launched Into The Most Extraordinary And Spectacular Fit Of Coughing Which Caught Arthur So Much By Surprise That He Started To Choke Violently, Discovered He Was Already Doing It And Got Thoroughly Confused.

In An Infinite Universe Anything Can Happen.

Anything Can Happen

It's Reassuring To Realize That Everybody Is As Stupid As You Are And That All We Are Doing When We Are Standing In The Kitchen Wondering What We Came In Here For Is "woking.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy Offers This Definition Of The Word "infinite". Infinite: Bigger Than The Biggest Thing Ever And Then Some. Much Bigger Than That In Fact, Really Amazingly Immense, A Totally Stunning Size, "wow, That's Big", Time. Infinity Is Just So Big That By Comparison, Bigness Itself Looks Really Titchy. Gigantic Multiplied By Colossal Multiplied By Staggeringly Huge Is The Sort Of Concept We're Trying To Get Across Here.

Plenty Of People Did Not Care For Him Much, But Then There Is A Huge Difference Between Disliking Somebody - Maybe Even Disliking Them A Lot - And Actually Shooting Them, Strangling Them, Dragging Them Through The Fields And Setting Their House On Fire.

In Moments Of Great Stress, Every Life Form That Exists Gives Out A Tiny Subliminal Signal.

I Didn't Notice I Was Being Set Upon By A Pickpocket, Which I Am Glad Of, Because I Like To Work Only With Professionals.

Reality Is Hopelessly Inaccurate.

We Live In Strange Times. We Also Live In Strange Places, Each In A Universe Of Our Own. The People With Whom We Populate Our Universe Are The Shadows Of Whole Other Universes Intersecting With Our Own.

Beethoven Tells You What It's Like To Be Beethoven And Mozart Tells You What It's Like To Be Human. Bach Tells You What It's Like To Be The Universe.

Time Is An Illusion. Lunchtime Doubly So.

Ha, But My Life Is A Box Of Wormgears.

And For All The Richest And Most Successful Merchants Life Inevitably Became Rather Dull And Niggly, And They Began To Imagine That This Was Therefore The Fault Of The Worlds They'd Settled On.

Obviously Somebody Had Been Appallingly Incompetent And He Hoped To God It Wasn't Him.

This Must Be Thursday. I Never Could Get The Hang Of Thursdays.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Structural Linguistics Is A Bitterly Divided And Unhappy Profession, And A Large Number Of Its Practitioners Spend Many Nights Drowning Their Sorrows In Ouisghian Zodahs.

The Presidents Job, Is Not To Wield Power Himself, But To Lead Attention Away From It.

But While Nature Has Considerable Resilience, There Is A Limit To How Far That Resilience Can Be Stretched. No One Knows How Close To The Limit We Are Getting. The Darker It Gets, The Faster We're Driving

For A Moment He Felt Good About This. A Moment Or Two Later He Felt Bad About Feeling Good About It. Then He Felt Good About Feeling Bad About Feeling Good About It And Satisfied, Drove On Into The Night.

The Point Is, You See," Said Ford, "that There Is No Point In Driving Yourself Mad Trying To Stop Yourself Going Mad. You Might Just As Well Give In And Save Your Sanity For Later.

Humans Think They Are Smarter Than Dolphins Because We Build Cars And Buildings And Start Wars Etc., And All That Dolphins Do Is Swim In The Water, Eat Fish And Play Around. Dolphins Believe That They Are Smarter For Exactly The Same Reasons.

Joo Janta 200 Super-chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses Have Been Specially Designed To Help People Develop A Relaxed Attitude To Danger. At The First Hint Of Trouble, They Turn Totally Black And Thus Prevent You From Seeing Anything That Might Alarm You.

I Tend Not To Read Or Watch Science Fiction, Particularly Not Comedy Science Fiction. The Point Is That If It's Less Good Than What I Do, There's No Point In Reading It, If It's Better Than What I Do It Makes Me Depressed

One Nonabsolute Number Is The Given Time Of Arrival, Which Is Now Known To Be One Of The Most Bizarre Of Mathematical Concepts, A Number Whose Existence Can Only Be Defined As Being Anything Other Than Itself. In Other Words, The Given Time Of Arrival Is The One Moment Of Time At Which It Is Impossible That Any Member Of The Party Will Arrive.

Mathematical Equations

Gordon Way's Astonishment At Being Suddenly Shot Dead Was Nothing Compared To His Astonishment At What Happened Next.

I Was Created To Fulfill A Function And I Failed In It. I Negated My Own Existence.

He Has Personality Problems Beyond The Dreams Of Analysts.

I'd Take The Awe Of Understanding Over The Awe Of Ignorance Any Day.

For As Long As He Could Remember, He’d Suffered From A Vague Nagging Feeling Of Being Not All There.

This Planet Has — Or Rather Had — A Problem, Which Was This: Most Of The People Living On It Were Unhappy For Pretty Much All Of The Time.

You Make Me Happy

The Difference Between Us And A Computer Is That, The Computer Is Blindingly Stupid, But It Is Capable Of Being Stupid Many, Many Million Times A Second.

What I Need... Is A Strong Drink And A Peer Group.

Anything That Happens, Happens. Anything That, In Happening, Causes Something Else To Happen, Causes Something Else To Happen. Anything That, In Happening, Causes Itself To Happen Again, Happens Again. It Doesn’t Necessarily Do It In Chronological Order, Though.

Alone Of All The Races On Earth, They Seem To Be Free From The 'grass Is Greener On The Other Side Of The Fence' Syndrome, And Roundly Proclaim That Australia Is, In Fact, The Other Side Of That Fence.

So The Hours Are Pretty Good Then?' He Resumed. The Vogon Stared Down At Him As Sluggish Thoughts Moiled Around In The Murky Depths. Yeah,' He Said, 'but Now You Come To Mention It, Most Of The Actual Minutes Are Pretty Lousy.

He Would Have Felt Safe If Alongside The Dentrassis' Underwear, The Piles Of Sqornshellous Mattresses And The Man From Betelgeuse Holding Up A Small Yellow Fish And Offering To Put It In His Ear He Had Been Able To See Just A Small Packet Of Cornflakes. But He Couldn't, And He Didn't Feel Safe.

The More Susan Waited, The More The Doorbell Didn't Ring. Or The Phone.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish.

Democracies Have

And Then I Decided I Was A Lemon For A Couple Of Weeks.

It's Part Of The Shape Of The Universe. I Only Have To Talk To Somebody And They Begin To Hate Me.

We All Like To Congregate At Boundary Conditions. Where Land Meets Water. Where Earth Meets Air. Where Bodies Meet Mind. Where Space Meets Time. We Like To Be On One Side, And Look At The Other.

And As He Drove On, The Rainclouds Dragged Down The Sky After Him, For, Though He Did Not Know It, Rob Mckenna Was A Rain God. All He Knew Was That His Working Days Were Miserable And He Had A Succession Of Lousy Holidays. All The Clouds Knew Was That They Loved Him And Wanted To Be Near Him, To Cherish Him, And To Water Him.

In The Beginning The Universe Was Created. This Has Made A Lot Of People Very Angry And Been Widely Regarded As A Bad Move.

A Fragrant Breeze Wandered Up From The Quiet Sea, Trailed Along The Beach, And Drifted Back To The Sea Again, Wondering Where To Go Next. On A Mad Impulse It Went Up To The Beach Again. It Drifted Back To Sea.

I Think The Idea Of Art Kills Creativity.

I Don't Like The Idea Of Missionaries. In Fact, The Whole Business Fills Me With Fear And Alarm. I Don't Believe In God, Or At Least Not In The One We've Invented For Ourselves In England To Fulfill Our Peculiarly English Needs, And Certainly Not In The Ones They've Invented In America Who Supply Their Servants With Toupees, Television Stations And, Most Importantly, Toll-free Telephone Numbers. I Wish That People Who Did Believe In Such Things Would Keep Them To Themselves And Not Export Them To The Developing World.

Did I Do Anything Wrong Today," He Said, "or Has The World Always Been Like This And I've Been Too Wrapped Up In Myself To Notice?

These Creatures You Call Mice, You See, They Are Not Quite As They Appear. They Are Merely The Protrusion Into Our Dimension Of Vastly Hyperintelligent Pandimensional Beings.

...and The Renewed Shock Had Nearly Made Him Spill His Drink. He Drained It Quickly Before Anything Serious Happened To It. He Then Had Another Quick One To Follow The First One Down And Check That It Was All Right.

We’ll Meet The Meat.

My Favorite Piece Of Information Is That Branwell Brontë, Brother Of Emily And Charlotte, Died Standing Up Leaning Against A Mantelpiece, In Order To Prove It Could Be Done. This Is Not Quite True, In Fact. My Absolute Favorite Piece Of Information Is The Fact That Young Sloths Are So Inept That They Frequently Grab Their Own Arms And Legs Instead Of Tree Limbs, And Fall Out Of Trees.

And So The Universe Ended.

It Seemed To Me,' Said Wonko The Sane, 'that Any Civilization That Had So Far Lost Its Head As To Need To Include A Set Of Detailed Instructions For Use In A Package Of Toothpicks, Was No Longer A Civilization In Which I Could Live And Stay Sane.

If There's Any Real Truth, It's That The Entire Multidimensional Infinity Of The Universe Is Almost Certainly Being Run By A Bunch Of Maniacs.

I'm Up To Here With Cool, Okay? I Am So Amazingly Cool You Could Keep A Side Of Meat In Me For A Month. I Am So Hip I Have Difficulty Seeing Over My Pelvis.

If You Took A Couple Of David Bowies And Stuck One Of The David Bowies On The Top Of The Other David Bowie, Then Attached Another David Bowie To The End Of Each Of The Arms 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 Hauntingly Familiar.

Exactly!" Said Deep Thought. "so Once You Do Know What The Question Actually Is, You'll Know What The Answer Means.

Earthmen Are Not Proud Of Their Ancestors And Never Invite Them Round To Dinner.

We No Longer Think Of Chairs As Technology, We Just Think Of Them As Chairs. But There Was A Time When We Hadn't Worked Out How Many Legs Chairs Should Have, How Tall They Should Be, And They Would Often "crash" When We Tried To Use Them. Before Long, Computers Will Be As Trivial And Plentiful As Chairs And We Will Cease To Be Aware Of The Things. In Fact I'm Sure We Will Look Back On This Last Decade And Wonder How We Could Ever Have Mistaken What We Were Doing With Them For "productivity"

It's Guff. It Doesn't Advance The Action. It Makes For Nice Fat Books Such As The American Market Thrives On, But It Doesn't Actually Get You Anywhere.

One Day Old Thrashbarg Said That Almighty Bob Had Declared That He, Thrashbarg, Was To Have First Pick Of The Sandwiches. The Villagers Asked Him When This Had Happened, Exactly, And Thrashbarg Said It Had Happened Yesterday, When They Weren't Looking. 'have Faith,' Old Thrashbarg Said, 'or Burn!' They Let Him Have First Pick Of The Sandwiches. It Seemed Easiest.

We Can't Win Against Obsession. They Care, We Don't. They Win.

But The Plans Were On Display…” “on Display? I Eventually Had To Go Down To The Cellar To Find Them.” “that’s The Display Department.” “with A Flashlight.” “ah, Well, The Lights Had Probably Gone.” “so Had The Stairs.” “but Look, You Found The Notice, Didn’t You?” “yes,” Said Arthur, “yes I Did. It Was On Display In The Bottom Of A Locked Filing Cabinet Stuck In A Disused Lavatory With A Sign On The Door Saying ‘beware Of The Leopard.

I Really Didn't Foresee The Internet. But Then, Neither Did The Computer Industry. Not That That Tells Us Very Much Of Course--the Computer Industry Didn't Even Foresee That The Century Was Going To End.

...they Discovered Only A Small Asteroid Inhabited By A Solitary Old Man Who Claimed Repeatedly That Nothing Was True, Though He Was Later Discovered To Be Lying.

The Argument Goes Something Like This: "i Refuse To Prove That I Exist," Says God, "for Proof Denies Faith, And Without Faith I Am Nothing.

Funny, How Just When You Think Life Can’t Possibly Get Any Worse It Suddenly Does.

The History Of Every Major Galactic Civilization Tends To Pass Through Three Distinct And Recognizable Phases, Those Of Survival, Inquiry And Sophistication, Otherwise Known As The 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?

Shee, You Guys Are So Unhip It's A Wonder Your Bums Don't Fall Off.

I Like The Cover," He Said. "don't Panic. It's The First Helpful Or Intelligible Thing Anybody's Said To Me All Day.

Ballycumber (ba-li-kum-ber) N. One Of The Six Half-read Books Lying Somewhere In Your Bed.

I Have Detected Disturbances In The Wash.' 'the Wash?' 'the Space-time Wash.' 'are We Talking About Some Sort Of Vogon Laundromat, Or What Are We Talking About?' 'eddies In The Space-time Continuum.' 'ah...is He. Is He.' 'what?' 'er, Who Is Eddy, Then, Exactly?

He Didn't Know Why He Had Become President Of The Galaxy, Except That It Seemed A Fun Thing To Be.

In Fact There Was Only One Species On The Planet More Intelligent Than Dolphins, And They Spent A Lot Of Their Time In Behavioural Research Laboratories Running Around Inside Wheels And Conduction Frighteningly Elegant And Subtle Experiments On Man. The Fact That Once Again Man Completely Misinterpreted This Relationship Was Entirely According To These Creatures’ Plans.

If Everyone Knew Exactly What I Was Going To Say, Then There Would Be No Point In My Saying It, Would There?

Marvin Was Humming Ironically Because He Hated Humans So Much.

Grown Men, He Told Himself, In Flat Contradiction Of Centuries Of Accumulated Evidence About The Way Grown Men Behave, Do Not Behave Like This.

In Fact, Lig Never Formally Resigned His Editorship—he Merely Left His Office Late One Morning, And Has Never Returned Since. Though Well Over A Century Has Now Passed, Many Members Of The Guide Staff Still Retain The Romantic Notion That He Has Simply Popped Out For A Sandwich And Will Yet Return To Put In A Solid Afternoon's Work. Strictly Speaking, All Editors Since Lig Lury Jr., Have Therefore Been Designated Acting Editors, And Lig's Desk Is Still Preserved The Way He Left It, With The Addition Of A Small Sign That Says Lig Lury, Jr., Editor, Missing, Presumed Fed.

Here's What The Encyclopedia Galactica Has To Say About Alcohol. It Says That Alcohol Is A Colourless Volatile Liquid Formed By The Fermentation Of Sugars And Also Notes Its Intoxicating Effect On Certain Carbon-based Life Forms.

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.

Being Literate As A Writer Is Good Craft, Is Knowing Your Job, Is Knowing How To Use Your Tools Properly And Not To Damage The Tools As You Use Them.

Put Away Your Worries, The World Is A Good And Perfect Place. It Is In Fact Very Easy.

Don't Spin Your Wheels And Stress. Take A Deep Breath, Center Yourself And Make A Plan.

Take A Deep Breath

I Find That Writing Is A Constant Battle With Exactly The Same Problems You've Always Had.

The Great Thing About Being The Only Species That Makes A Distinction Between Right And Wrong Is That We Can Make Up The Rules For Ourselves As We Go Along.

Now The World Has Gone To Bed, Darkness Won't Engulf My Head, I Can See By Infrared, How I Hate The Night. Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, Try To Count Electric Sheep, Sweet Dream Wishes You Can Keep, How I Hate The Night. -marvin

When The Idea Comes, I Often Can't Remember Where It Came From. I Remember Very Little About Writing The First Series Of Hitchhiker's. It's Almost As If Someone Else Wrote It.

Fifteen Years Was A Long Time To Be Stranded Anywhere, Particularly Somewhere As Mind-boggingly Dull As Earth.

The Switch Had Two Settings. You Could Either Turn It To Auto, In Which Case The Awning Lowered Itself Whenever The Sun Came Out, Or You Could Set It To Manuel [sic], In Which Case, We Assumed, A Small, Incompetent Spanish Waiter Came And Did It For You.

Dirk Was, For One Of The Few Times In A Life Of Exuberantly Prolific Loquacity, Wordless.

Even Light, Which Travels So Fast It Takes Most Races Thousands Of Years To Realize That It Travels At All, Takes Time To Journey Between The Stars.

Let Us Be Dreamers, Thinkers, Speculative Philosophers, Or As Our Spouses Would Have It: Idiots

Religion ... Has Certain Ideas At The Heart Of It Which We Call Sacred Or Holy Or Whatever. What It Means Is, 'here Is An Idea Or A Notion That You're Not Allowed To Say Anything Bad About; You're Just Not. Why Not? Because You're Just Not. If Someone Votes For A Party That You Don't Agree With, You're Free To Argue About It As Much As You Like; Everybody Will Have An Argument But Nobody Feels Aggrieved By It. ... But On The Other Hand, If Somebody Says 'i Mustn't Move A Light Switch On A Saturday', You Say 'i Respect That'.

In The Stillness, A Fly Would Not Have Dared Clear It's Throat.

He Stood Up Straight And Looked The World Squarely In The Fields And Hills. To Add Weight To His Words He Stuck The Rabbit Bone In His Hair. He Spread His Arm Out Wide. "i Will Go Mad!" He Annouced.

He Inched His Way Up The Corridor As If He Would Rather Be Yarding His Way Down It, Which Was True.

Your God Person Puts An Apple Tree In The Middle Of A Garden And Says, Do What You Like, Guys, Oh, But Don't Eat The Apple. Surprise Surprise, They Eat It And He Leaps Out From Behind A Bush Shouting "gotcha". It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference If They Hadn't Eaten It.' 'why Not?' 'because If You're Dealing With Somebody Who Has The Sort Of Mentality Which Likes Leaving Hats On The Pavement With Bricks Under Them You Know Perfectly Well They Won't Give Up. They'll Get You In The End.

The Invention Of The Scientific Method And Science Is, I'm Sure We'll All Agree, The Most Powerful Intellectual Idea, The Most Powerful Framework For Thinking And Investigating And Understanding And Challenging The World Around Us That There Is, And It Rests On The Premise That Any Idea Is There To Be Attacked. If It Withstands The Attack Then It Lives To Fight Another Day And If It Doesn't Withstand The Attack Then Down It Goes. Religion Doesn't Seem To Work Like That.

Not Unnaturally, Many Elevators Imbued With Intelligence And Precognition Became Terribly Frustrated With The Mindless Business Of Going Up And Down, Up And Down, Experimented Briefly With The Notion Of Going Sideways, As A Sort Of Existential Protest, Demanded Participation In The Decision-making Process And Finally Took To Squatting In Basements Sulking. An Impoverished Hitch-hiker Visiting Any Planets In The Sirius Star System These Days Can Pick Up Easy Money Working As A Counsellor For Neurotic Elevators.

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

I Always Thought Something Was Fundamentally Wrong With The Universe

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.

Everything You See Or Hear Or Experience In Any Way At All Is Specific To You. You Create A Universe By Perceiving It, So Everything In The Universe You Perceive Is Specific To You.

The Fact Is, I Don't Know Where My Ideas Come From. Nor Does Any Writer. The Only Real Answer Is To Drink Way Too Much Coffee And Buy Yourself A Desk That Doesn't Collapse When You Beat Your Head Against It.

'these Things Will Become Clear To You,' Said The Old Man Gently, 'at Least,' He Added With Slight Doubt In His Voice, 'clearer Than They Are At The Moment.'

Time Travel, By Its Very Nature, Was Invented In All Periods Of History Simultaneously.

How Many Roads Must A Man Walk Down?

Ultimate Questions

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

The Simple Truth Is That Interstellar Distances Will Not Fit Into The Human Imagination.

Unfortunately This Electric Monk Had Developed A Fault, And Had Started To Believe All Kinds Of Things, More Or Less At Random. It Was Even Beginning To Believe Things They'd Have Difficulty Believing In Salt Lake City.

Siamese Cats Have A Way Of Staring At You. Those Who Have Walked In On The Queen Cleaning Her Teeth Will Know The Expression.

See First, Think Later, Then Test. But Always See First. Otherwise You Will Only See What You Were Expecting. Most Scientists Forget That.

The Only Moral It Is Possible To Draw From This Story Is That One Should Never Throw The Q Letter Into A Privet Bush, But Unfortunately There Are Times When It Is Unavoidable.

In Many Of The More Relaxed Civilizations On The Outer Eastern Rim Of The Galaxy, The Hitch-hiker's Guide Has Already Supplanted The Great Encyclopaedia Galactica As The Standard Repository Of All Knowledge And Wisdom, For Though It Has Many Omissions And Contains Much That Is Apocryphal, Or At Least Wildly Inaccurate, It Scores Over The Older, More Pedestrian Work In Two Important Respects. First, It Is Slightly Cheaper; And Secondly It Has The Words Don't Panic Inscribed In Large Friendly Letters On Its Cover.

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