Background Image

...

I Begged Her, 'please Don't Leave Me Stranded In The Middle Of Some Primitive Zarking Forest With No Medical Help And A Head Injury. I Could Be In Serious Trouble And So Could She.'" "what Did She Say?" "she Hit Me On The Head With The Rock Again," Ford Responded Curtly. "i Think I Can Confirm That Was My Daughter." "sweet Kid." "you Have To Get To Know Her," Said Arthur. "she Eases Up, Does She?" "no, But You Get A Better Sense Of When To Duck.

-Douglas Adams

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Begged Her, 'please

Douglas Adams

...

I Begged Her, 'please Don't Leave Me Stranded In The Middle Of Some Primitive Zarking Forest With No Medical Help And A Head Injury. I Could Be In Serious Trouble And So Could She.'" "what Did She Say?" "she Hit Me On The Head With The Rock Again," Ford Responded Curtly. "i Think I Can Confirm That Was My Daughter." "sweet Kid." "you Have To Get To Know Her," Said Arthur. "she Eases Up, Does She?" "no, But You Get A Better Sense Of When To Duck.

Views: 19909

Topic

More From Douglas Adams

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.

We Talked About How Easy It Was To Make The Mistake Of Anthropomorphizing Animals, And Projecting Our Own Feelings And Perceptions On To Them, Where They Were Inappropriate And Didn't Fit. We Simply Had No Idea What It Was Like Being An Extremely Large Lizard, And Neither For That Matter Did The Lizard, Because It Was Not Self-conscious About Being An Extremely Large Lizard, It Just Got On With The Business Of Being One. To React With Revulsion To Its Behavior Was To Make The Mistake Of Applying Criteria That Are Only Appropriate To The Business Of Being Human.

I Tend To Get Very Suspicious Of Anything That Thinks It's Art While It's Being Created.

The Impossible Often Has A Kind Of Integrity To It Which The Merely Improbable Lacks. How Often Have You Been Presented With An Apparently Rational Explanation Of Something That Works In All Respects Other Than One, Which Is Just That It Is Hopelessly Improbable? Your Instinct Is To Say, 'yes, But He Or She Simply Wouldn't Do That.

...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.

Isn't It Enough To See That A Garden Is Beautiful Without Having To Believe That There Are Fairies At The Bottom Of It Too?

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

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?

He Felt A Spasm Of Excitement Because He Knew Instinctively Who It Was, Or At Least Knew Who It Was He Wanted It To Be, And Once You Know What It Is You Want To Be True, Instinct Is A Very Useful Device For Enabling You To Know That It Is.

Why Should I Want To Make Anything Up? Life's Bad Enough As It Is Without Wanting To Invent Any More Of It.

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.

The Last Time Anybody Made A List Of The Top Hundred Character Attributes Of New Yorkers, Common Sense Snuck In At Number 79.

Space Is Really Big-really Big.

All Opinions Are Not Equal. Some Are A Very Great Deal More Robust, Sophisticated And Well Supported In Logic And Argument Than Others.

Yes. They Are The Words That Finally Turned Me Into The Hermit I Have Now Become. It Was Quite Sudden. I Saw Them, And I Knew What I Had To Do." The Sign Read: "hold Stick Near Center Of Its Length. Moisten Pointed End In Mouth. Insert In Tooth Space, Blunt End Next To Gum. Use Gentle In-out Motion." "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.

Despite The Fact That An Indonesian Island Chicken Has Probably Had A Much More Natural Life Than One Raised On A Battery Farm In England, People Who Wouldn't Think Twice About Buying Something Oven-ready Become Much More Upset About A Chicken That They've Been On A Boat With, So There Is Probably Buried In The Western Psyche A Deep Taboo About Eating Anything You've Been Introduced To Socially.

A Learning Experience Is One Of Those Things That Says, 'you Know That Thing You Just Did? Don't Do That.

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.

The System Of Life On This Planet Is So Astoundingly Complex That It Was A Long Time Before Man Even Realized That It Was A System At All And That It Wasn't Something That Was Just There.

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.

Well, I Mean, Yes Idealism, Yes The Dignity Of Pure Research, Yes The Pursuit Of Truth In All Its Forms, But There Comes A Point I'm Afraid Where You Begin To Suspect That The Entire Multidimensional Infinity Of The Universe Is Almost Certainly Being Run By A Bunch Of Maniacs. And If It Comes To A Choice Between Spending Yet Another Ten Million Years Finding That Out, And On The Other Hand Just Taking The Money And Running, Then I For One Could Do With The Exercise.

The Available Worlds Looked Pretty Grim. They Had Little To Offer Him Because He Had Little To Offer Them. He Had Been Extremely Chastened To Realize That Although He Originally Came From A World Which Had Cars And Computers And Ballet And Armagnac, He Didn't, By Himself, Know How Any Of It Worked. He Couldn't Do It. Left To His Own Devices He Couldn't Build A Toaster. He Could Just About Make A Sandwich And That Was It.

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

How Many Roads Must A Man Walk Down?

Ultimate Questions

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

The Reason Why So Many Sects Hang Around Airports Looking For Converts: They Know That People There Are At Their Most Vulnerable And Perplexed, And Ready To Accept Any Kind Of Guidance.

It {darwin's Theory Of Evolution] Was A Concept Of Such Stunning Simplicity, But It Gave Rise, Naturally, To All Of The Infinite And Baffling Complexity Of Life. The Awe It Inspired In Me Made The Awe That People Talk About In Respect Of Religious Experience Seem, Frankly, Silly Beside It. I'd Take The Awe Of Understanding Over The Awe Of Ignorance Any Day.

All You Really Need To Know For The Moment Is That The Universe Is A Lot More Complicated Than You Might Think, Even If You Start From A Position Of Thinking It's Pretty Damn Complicated In The First Place.

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.

You Can't Dodge Your Responsibilities By Saying They Don't Exist!

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.

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.

If It Looks Like A Duck, And Quacks Like A Duck, We Have At Least To Consider The Possibility That We Have A Small Aquatic Bird Of The Family Anatidae On Our Hands.

A Nerd Is Someone Who Uses A Telephone To Talk To Other People About Telephones.

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.

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.

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

My Own Strategy Is To Find A Car, Or The Nearest Equivalent, Which Looks As If It Knows Where It's Going And Follow It. I Rarely End Up Where I Was Intending To Go, But Often I End Up Somewhere I Needed To Be.

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

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.

The Moment At Which Two People, Approaching From Opposite Ends Of A Long Passageway, Recognize Each Other And Immediately Pretend They Haven T. This Is To Avoid The Ghastly Embarrassment Of Having To Continue Recognizing Each Other The Whole Length Of The Corridor.

The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy Also Mentions Alcohol. It Says That The Best Drink In Existence Is The Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, The Effect Of Which Is Like Having Your Brains Smashed Out With A Slice Of Lemon Wrapped Round A Large Gold Brick.

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!

The Complexities Of Cause And Effect Defy Analysis.

Cause And Effect

You Can't Possibly Be A Scientist If You Mind People Thinking That You're A Fool.

A Beach House Isn't Just Real Estate. It's A State Of Mind.

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

Democracy Is All About Not Electing The Wrong Man-eating Lizard.

If We See You Smoking We Will Assume You Are On Fire And Take Appropriate Action.

Cigarette Smoke

[the Head Of Radio Three] Had Been Ensnared By The Music Director Of The College And A Professor Of Philosophy. These Two Were Busy Explaining To The Harassed Man That The Phrase "too Much Mozart" Was, Given Any Reasonable Definition Of Those Three Words, An Inherently Self-contradictory Expression, And That Any Sentence Which Contained Such A Phrase Would Be Thereby Rendered Meaningless And Could Not, Consequently, Be Advanced As Part Of An Argument In Favour Of Any Given Programme-scheduling Strategy.

Don't Believe Anything You Read On The Net. Except This. Well, Including This, I Suppose.

The Future Of Computer Power Is Pure Simplicity.

Ok," He Said, "i Don't Like To Disturb You At What I Know Must Be A Difficult And Distressing Time For You, But I Need To Know First Of All If You Actually Realize That This Is A Difficult And Distressing Time For You.

I've Come Up With A Set Of Rules That Describe Our Reactions To Technologies: 1. Anything That Is In The World When You’re Born Is Normal And Ordinary And Is Just A Natural Part Of The Way The World Works. 2. Anything That's Invented Between When You’re Fifteen And Thirty-five Is New And Exciting And Revolutionary And You Can Probably Get A Career In It. 3. Anything Invented After You're Thirty-five Is Against The Natural Order Of Things.

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.

There's Nothing Worse Than Sitting Down To Write A Novel And Saying, "well, Okay, I'm Going To Do Something Of High Artistic Worth." It's Funny.

He Learned To Communicate With Birds And Discovered Their Conversation Was Fantastically Boring. It Was All To Do With Windspeed, Wingspans, Power-to-weight Ratios And A Fair Bit About Berries.

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

You Are Zaphod Beeblebrox?' 'yeah,' Said Zaphod, 'but Don't Shout It Out Or They'll All Want One.' 'the Zaphod Beeblebrox?' 'no, Just A Zaphod Beeblebrox, Didn't You Hear I Come In Six Packs?' 'but Sir,' It Squealed, 'i Just Heard On The Sub-ether Radio Report. It Said You Were Dead...' 'yeah, That's Right, I Just Haven't Stopped Moving Yet.

The Answer To The Great Question... Of Life, The Universe And Everything... Is... Forty-two,' Said Deep Thought, With Infinite Majesty And Calm.

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.

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

I Don’t Know What I’m Looking For.” “what Not?” “because … Because … I Think It Might Be Because If I Knew I Wouldn’t Be Able To Look For Them.

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.

Looking Up Into The Night Sky Is Looking Into Infinity — Distance Is Incomprehensible And Therefore Meaningless

He Spent A Lot Of Time Flying. He Learnt To Communicate With Birds And Discovered That Their Conversation Was Fantastically Boring. It Was All To Do With Wind Speed, Wing Spans, Power-to-weight Ratios And A Fair Bit About Berries. Unfortunately, He Discovered, Once You Have Learnt Birdspeak You Quickly Come To Realize That The Air Is Full Of It The Whole Time, Just Inane Bird Chatter. There Is No Getting Away From It.

Arthur Dent: What Happens If I Press This Button? Ford Prefect: I Wouldn't- Arthur Dent: Oh. Ford Prefect: What Happened? Arthur Dent: A Sign Lit Up, Saying 'please Do Not Press This Button Again.

Please Call Me Eddie If It Will Help You To Relax.

Lovers Of Print Are Simply Confusing The Plate For The Food.

Words Used Carelessly, As If They Did Not Matter In Any Serious Way, Often Allowed Otherwise Well-guarded Truths To Seep Through.

There Is No Point In Using The Word 'impossible' To Describe Something That Has Clearly Happened.

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.

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.

The Kakapo Is An Extremely Fat Bird. A Good-sized Adult Will Weigh About Six Or Seven Pounds, And Its Wings Are Just About Good For Waggling A Bit If It Thinks It's About To Trip Over Something - But Flying Is Out Of The Question. Sadly, However, It Seems That Not Only Has The Kakapo Forgotten How To Fly, But It Has Forgotten That It Has Forgotten How To Fly. Apparently A Seriously Worried Kakapo Will Sometimes Run Up A Tree And Jump Out Of It, Whereupon It Flies Like A Brick And Lands In A Graceless Heap On The Ground.

He Was A Man Who Was Charged With The Work He Did In Life Because He Was Not One To Ask Questions — Not So Much On Account Of Any Natural Quality Of Discretion As Because He Simply Could Never Think Of Any Questions To Ask.

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.

Mr L Prosser Was, As They Say, Only Human. In Other Words He Was A Carbon-based Life Form Descended From An Ape. More Specifically He Was Forty, Fat And Shabby And Worked For The Local Council. Curiously Enough, Though He Didn't Know It, He Was Also A Direct Male-line Descendant Of Genghis Khan, Though Intervening Generations And Racial Mixing Had So Juggled His Genes That He Had No Discernible Mongoloid Characteristics, And The Only Vestiges Left In Mr L Prosser Of His Mighty Ancestry Were A Pronounced Stoutness About The Tum And A Predilection For Little Fur Hats.

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"

To Summarize The Summary Of The Summary: People Are A Problem.

The Saab Seethed Off Into The Night. Arthur Watched It Go, As Stunned As A Man Might Be Who, Having Believed Himself To Be Totally Blind For Five Years, Suddenly Discovers That He Had Merely Been Wearing Too Large A Hat.

Time Is An Illusion. Lunchtime Doubly So.

The World Is A Thing Of Utter Inordinate Complexity And Richness And Strangeness That Is Absolutely Awesome.

Alltami (n.) The Ancient Art Of Being Able To Balance The Hot And Cold Shower Taps.

Listen, Three Eyes," He Said, "don't You Try To Outweird Me, I Get Stranger Things Than You Free With My Breakfast Cereal.

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.

I Refuse To Answer That Question On The Grounds That I Don't Know The Answer

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.

Many Men Of Course Became Extremely Rich, But This Was Perfectly Natural And Nothing To Be Ashamed Of Because No One Was Really Poor, At Least No One Worth Speaking Of.

Perfectly Natural

Beppu (n.) The Triumphant Slamming Shut Of A Book After Reading The Final Page.

'the Difficulty With This Conversation,' Said Arthur After A Sort Of Pondering Look Had Crawled Slowly Across His Face Like A Mountaineer Negotiating A Tricky Outcrop, 'is That It's Very Different From Most Of The Ones I've Had Of Late. Which, As I Explained, Have Mostly Been With Trees.'

After A While He Played With The Pencil And The Paper Again And Was Delighted When He Discovered How To Make A Mark With The One On The Other. Various Noises Continued Outside, But He Didn't Know Whether They Were Real Or Not. He Then Talked To His Table For A Week To See How It Would React.

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.

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

We’ll Meet The Meat.

I'm Spending A Year Dead For Tax Reasons.

Driving A Porsche In London Is Like Bringing A Ming Vase To A Football Game.

There Is No Problem So Complicated That You Can't Find A Very Simple Answer To It If You Look At It Right.

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

I Think All Cats Are Wild. They Only Act Tame If There´s A Saucer Of Milk In It For Them.

A Cup Of Tea Would Restore My Normality.

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

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.

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

The Storm Had Now Definitely Abated, And What Thunder There Was Now Grumbled Over More Distant Hills, Like A Man Saying 'and Another Thing...' Twenty Minutes After Admitting He'd Lost The Argument.

It's The Story Of My Life. You See, The Quality Of Any Advice Anybody Has To Offer Has To Be Judged Against The Quality Of Life They Actually Lead. Now, As You Look Through This Document You'll See That I've Underlined All The Major Decisions I Ever Made To Make The Stand Out. They're All Indexed And Cross-referenced. See? All I Can Suggest Is That If You Take Decisions That Are Exactly Opposite To The Sort Of Decisions That I've Taken, Then Maybe You Won't Finish Up At The End Of Your Life" --she Paused, And Filled Her Lungs For A Good Should--"in A Smelly Old Cave Like This!

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.

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

Mark Carwardine's Role, Essentially, Was To Be The One Who Knew What He Was Talking About. My Role, And One For Which I Was Entirely Qualified, Was To Be An Extremely Ignorant Non-zoologist To Whom Everything That Happened Would Come As A Complete Surprise.

Bistromathics Itself Is Simply A Revolutionary New Way Of Understanding The Behavior Of Numbers. Just As Einstein Observed That Space Was Not An Absolute But Depended On The Observer's Movement In Space, And That Time Was Not An Absolute, But Depended On The Observer's Movement In Time, So It Is Now Realized That Numbers Are Not Absolute, But Depend On The Observer's Movement In Restaurants.

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.'

"what's Up?" "i Don't Know," Said Marvin, "i've Never Been There."

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

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

The Guide Says There Is An Art To Flying", Said Ford, "or Rather A Knack. The Knack Lies In Learning How To Throw Yourself At The Ground And Miss.

I Think Media Are At Their Most Interesting Before Anybody's Thought Of Calling Them Art, When People Still Think They're Just A Load Of Junk.

We Demand Rigidly Defined Areas Of Doubt And Uncertainty!

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

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.

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.

Arthur Blinked At The Screens And Felt He Was Missing Something Important. Suddenly He Realized What It Was. "is There Any Tea On This Spaceship?" He Asked.

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

The Seat Received Him In A Loose And Distant Kind Of Way, Like An Aunt Who Disapproves Of The Last Fifteen Years Of Your Life And Will Therefore Furnish You With A Basic Sherry, But Refuses To Catch Your Eye.

If On The Other Hand He Went To Pay His Respects To The Door And It Wasn't There . . . What Then? The Answer, Of Course, Was Very Simple. He Had A Whole Board Of Circuits For Dealing With Exactly This Problem, In Fact This Was The Very Heart Of His Function. He Would Continue To Believe In It Whatever The Facts Turned Out To Be, What Else Was The Meaning Of Belief? The Door Would Still Be There, Even If The Door Was Not.

God's Final Message To His Creation: 'we Apologize For The Inconvenience.

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

I Say What It Occurs To Me To Say When I Think I Hear People Say Things. More I Cannot Say.

It's Not The Fall That Kills You; It's The Sudden Stop At The End.

And So The Problem Remained; Lots Of The People Were Mean, And Most Of Them Were Miserable, Even The Ones With Digital Watches.

In An Infinite Universe Anything Can Happen.

Anything Can Happen

And Then, One Thursday, Nearly Two Thousand Years After One Man Had Been Nailed To A Tree For Saying How Great It Would Be To Be Nice To People For A Change, A Girl Sitting On Her Own In A Small Café In Rickmansworth Suddenly Realized What It Was That Had Been Going Wrong All This Time, And She Finally Knew How The World Could Be Made A Good And Happy Place. This Time It Was Right, It Would Work, And No One Would Have To Get Nailed To Anything.

High On A Rocky Promontory Sat An Electric Monk On A Bored Horse.

Really, The Moment You Have Any Idea, The Second Thought That Enters Your Mind After The Original Idea Is, "what Is This? Is It A Book, Is It A Movie, Is It A This, Is It A That, Is It A Short Story, Is It A Breakfast Cereal?" Really, From That Moment, Your Decision About What Kind Of Thing It Is Then Determines How It Develops.

The Ultimate Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything Is...42!

Who Is This God Person Anyway?

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

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

The Problem Is, Or Rather One Of The Problems, For There Are Many, A Sizeable Proportion Of Which Are Continually Clogging Up The Civil, Commercial, And Criminal Courts In All Areas Of The Galaxy, And Especially, Where Possible, The More Corrupt Ones, This. The Previous Sentence Makes Sense. That Is Not The Problem. This Is: Change. Read It Through Again And You'll Get It.

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.

The Quality Of Any Advice Anybody Has To Offer Has To Be Judged Against The Quality Of Life They Actually Lead.

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.

He Was Constantly Reminded Of How Startlingly Different A Place The World Was When Viewed From A Point Only Three Feet To The Left.

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 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.

Why Are People Born? Why Do They Die? Why Do They Want To Spend So Much Of The Intervening Time Wearing Digital Watches?

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!

It Is Difficult To Be Sat On All Day, Every Day, By Some Other Creature, Without Forming An Opinion On Them. On The Other Hand, It Is Perfectly Possible To Sit All Day, Every Day, On Top Of Another Creature And Not Have The Slightest Thought About Them Whatsoever.

A Hole Had Just Appeared In The Galaxy. It Was Exactly A Nothingth Of A Second Long, A Nothingth Of An Inch Wide, And Quite A Lot Of Million Light Years From End To End. As It Closed Up [...] Two Hundred And Thirty-nine Thousand Lightly Fried Eggs Fell Out Of It...materializing In A Large Woobly Heap On The Famine-struck Land Of Poghril In The Pansel System. The Whole Poghril Tribe Had Died Out From Famine Except For One Last Man Who Died Of Cholesterol Poisoning Some Weeks Later.

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.

Meanwhile, The Poor Babel Fish, By Effectively Removing All Barriers To Communication Between Different Races And Cultures, Has Caused More And Bloodier Wars Than Anything Else In The History Of Creation.

Let Us Think The Unthinkable, Let Us Do The Undoable, Let Us Prepare To Grapple With The Ineffable Itself, And See If We May Not Eff It After All.

Everybody Has Their Moment Of Great Opportunity In Life. If You Happen To Miss The One You Care About, Then Everything Else Becomes Eerily Easy.

A Common Mistake That People Make When Trying To Design Something Completely Foolproof Is To Underestimate The Ingenuity Of Complete Fools.

I Don't Really Have Any Advice, Other Than To Say It's The Most Appallingly Difficult Thing I've Ever Tried To Do And I Wish I Had A Better Idea Of How To Do It. In My Experience What You End Up With Is The By-product Of Your Failure To Achieve What You Set Out To Do. It May Turn Out Ok, But It Wasn't What You Meant And You've No Idea How You Got There.

But Nowadays Everybody's A Comedian, Even The Weather Girls And Continuity Announcers. We Laugh At Everything. Not Intelligently Anymore, Not With Sudden Shock, Astonishment, Or Revelation, Just Relentlessly And Meaninglessly. No More Rain Showers In The Desert, Just Mud And Drizzle Everywhere, Occasionally Illuminated By The Flash Of Paparazzi.

What To Do If You Find Yourself Stuck In A Crack In The Ground Underneath A Giant Boulder You Can't Move, With No Hope Of Rescue. Consider How Lucky You Are That Life Has Been Good To You So Far. Alternatively, If Life Hasn't Been Good To You So Far, Which Given Your Current Circumstances Seems More Likely, Consider How Lucky You Are That It Won't Be Troubling You Much Longer.

Finding Yourself

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.

A Theory Of The Universe That States: If Anyone Finds Out What The Universe Is For, It Will Disappear And Be Replaced By Something More Bizarrely Inexplicable.

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.

Space Is Big. You Just Won't Believe How Vastly, Hugely, Mind-bogglingly Big It Is.

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

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.

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

"would You Like To See The Menu?" He Said. "or Would You Like To Meet The Dish Of The Day?" [...] "good Evening," It Lowed And Sat Back Heavily On Its Haunches, "i Am The Main Dish Of The Day. May I Interest You In Parts Of My Body?"

What Does It Matter? Science Has Achieved Some Wonderful Things, Of Course, But I'd Far Rather Be Happy Than Right Any Day.

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.

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

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.”

They Live In Perpetual Fear Of The Time They Call "the Coming Of The Great White Handkerchief

I Rarely End Up Where I Was Intending To Go, But Often I End Up Somewhere I Needed To Be.

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.

Finding Your Path

The Longest And Most Destructive Party Ever Held Is Now Into Its Fourth Generation And Still No One Shows Any Signs Of Leaving. Somebody Did Once Look At His Watch, But That Was Eleven Years Ago Now, And There Has Been No Follow Up.

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.

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.

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.

Insofar As She Recognized At All That She Was Dreaming, She Realized That She Must Be Exploring Her Subconscious Mind. She Had Heard It Said That Humans Are Supposed Only To Use About A Tenth Of Their Brains, And That No One Was Really Clear What The Other Nine Tenths Were For, But She Had Certainly Never Heard It Suggested That They Were Used For Storing Penguins.

The Encyclopedia Galactica Defines A Robot As A Mechanical Apparatus Designed To Do The Work Of A Man. The Marketing Division Of The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Defines A Robot As "your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Defines The Marketing Devision Of The Sirius Cybernetic Corporation As "a Bunch Of Mindless Jerks Who'll Be The First Against The Wall When The Revolution Comes.

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

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

Marvin Was Humming Ironically Because He Hated Humans So Much.

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.

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.

The Lights Were Off So That His Heads Could Avoid Looking At Each Other Because Neither Of Them Was Currently A Particular Engaging Sight, Nor Had They Been Since He Had Made The Error Of Looking Into His Soul. It Had Indeed Been An Error. It Had Been Late One Night-- Of Course. It Had Been A Difficult Day-- Of Course. There Had Been Soulful Music Playing On The Ship's Sound System-- Of Course. And He Had, Of Course, Been Slightly Drunk. In Other Words, All The Usual Conditions That Bring On A Bout Of Soul Searching Had Applied, But It Had, Nevertheless, Clearly Been An Error.

The Light Was Only Just Visible - Except Of Course That There Was No One To See, No Witnesses, Not This Time, But It Was Nevertheless A Light.

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.

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.

I Seem To Be Having Tremendous Difficulty With My Life-style

The Guide Is Definitive. Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

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.

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

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

Life,” Said Marvin Dolefully, “loathe It Or Ignore It, You Can’t Like It.

In Order To Fly, All One Must Do Is Simply Miss The Ground.

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.

When The Girl Sitting At The Next Table Looked Away From A Moment, Dirk Leaned Over And Took Her Coffee. He Knew That He Was Perfectly Safe Doing This Because She Would Simply Not Be Able To Believe That This Had Happened.

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.

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.

The World Wide Web Is The Only Thing I Know Of Whose Shortened Form Takes Three Times Longer To Say Than What It's Short For.

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

It Is A Mistake To Think You Can Solve Any Major Problems Just With Potatoes.

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.

I Don't Believe It. Prove It To Me And I Still Won't Believe It.

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.

The Light Works," He Said, Indicating The Window, "the Gravity Works," He Said, Dropping A Pencil On The Floor. "anything Else We Have To Take Our Chances With.

Trending Author

Walter De La Mare

Category