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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.

-Douglas Adams

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Not Unnaturally, Many Elevators

Douglas Adams

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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.

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Reality Is Hopelessly Inaccurate.

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.

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

Shoeburyness (abs.n.) The Vague Uncomfortable Feeling You Get When Sitting On A Seat Which Is Still Warm From Somebody Else's Bottom.

Uncomfortable Feeling

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.

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

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.

Oh Dear,' Says God, 'i Hadn't Thought Of That,' And Promptly Vanishes In A Puff Of Logic.

There Is An Art To The Business Of Making Sandwiches Which It Is Given To Few Ever To Find The Time To Explore In Depth. It Is A Simple Task, But The Opportunities For Satisfaction Are Many And Profound.

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

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

All Through My Life I've Had This Strange Unaccountable Feeling That Something Was Going On In The World, Something Big, Even Sinister, And No One Would Tell Me What It Was." "no," Said The Old Man, "that's Just Perfectly Normal Paranoia. Everyone In The Universe Has That.

Perfectly Normal

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.

I Am A Private Detective. I Am Paid To Be Inquisitive And Presumptuous.

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

The Impossible Often Has A Kind Of Integrity Which The Merely Improbable Lacks.

Impossible Things

Possible And Impossible

I'm Spending A Year Dead For Tax Reasons.

There Was One Planet Off In The Seventh Dimension That Got Used As A Ball In A Game Of Intergalactic Bar Billiards. Got Potted Straight Into A Black Hole.

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

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.

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.

You Live And Learn. At Any Rate, You Live.

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

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.

If You Really Want To Understand Something, The Best Way Is To Try And Explain It To Someone Else.

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

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.

What Was The Self-sacrifice?" I Jettisoned Half Of A Much-loved And I Think Irreplaceable Pair Of Shoes." Why Was That Self-sacrifice?" Because They Were Mine!" Said Ford, Crossly. I Think We Have Different Value Systems." Well Mine's Better.

In The Old Days, Writers Used To Sit In Front Of A Typewriter And Stare Out Of The Window. Nowadays, Because Of The Marvels Of Convergent Technology, The Thing You Type On And The Window You Stare Out Of Are Now The Same Thing.

Capital Letters Were Always The Best Way Of Dealing With Things You Didn't Have A Good Answer To.

...and The Universe, ... Will Explode Later For Your Pleasure.

I've Never Understood All This Fuss People Make About The Dawn. I've Seen A Few And They're Never As Good As The Photographs, Which Have The Additional Advantage Of Being Things You Can Look At When You're In The Right Frame Of Mind, Which Is Usually Around Lunchtime.

Life! Don't Talk To Me About Life!

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

Who Should Play The Lead Role In A Film About Me? Dunno. Danny De Vito? Jeff Goldblum? Meryl Streep? Someone Of That Kind.

"i Refuse To Prove That I Exist" Says God, "for Proof Denies Faith, And Without Faith, I Am Nothing." "oh," Says Man, "but The Babel Fish Is A Dead Give-away, Isn't It? It Proves You Exist, And So Therefore You Don't. Q.e.d." "oh, I Hadn't Thought Of That," Says God, Who Promptly Vanishes In A Puff Of Logic.

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

You Cannot See What I See Because You See What You See. You Cannot Know What I Know Because You Know What You Know. What I See And What I Know Cannot Be Added To What You See And What You Know Because They Are Not Of The Same Kind. Neither Can It Replace What You See And What You Know, Because That Would Be To Replace You Yourself." "hang On, Can I Write This Down?" Said Arthur, Excitedly Fumbling In His Pocket For A Pencil.

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

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.

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.

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.

If I Were Not An Atheist, I Think I Would Have To Be A Catholic Because If It Wasn't The Forces Of Natural Selection That Designed Fish, It Must Have Been An Italian.

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

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?

The Books People Are Writing Today, They're Too Long. You Get A Little Bit Of Plot, And Then Pages And Pages Of Creative Writing. They Teach Classes In How To Do This. They Should Teach Classes In How To Stop!

Assumptions Are What We Don't Know We Are Making

It Is Worth Repeating At This Point The Theories That Ford Had Come Up With, On His First Encounter With Human Beings, To Account For Their Peculiar Habit Of Continually Stating And Restating The Very Very Obvious, As In "it's A Nice Day," Or "you're Very Tall," Or "so This Is It, We're Going To Die." His First Theory Was That If Human Beings Didn't Keep Exercising Their Lips, Their Mouths Probably Shriveled Up. After A Few Months Of Observation He Had Come Up With A Second Theory, Which Was This--"if Human Beings Don't Keep Exercising Their Lips, Their Brains Start Working.

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

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.

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.

I Wanted To Be John Cleese. It Took Me Some Time To Realise That The Job Was Taken.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

If The Universe Came To An End Every Time There Was Some Uncertainty About What Had Happened In It, It Would Never Have Got Beyond The First Picosecond. And Many Of Course Don't. It's Like A Human Body, You See. A Few Cuts And Bruises Here And There Don't Hurt It. Not Even Major Surgery If It's Done Properly. Paradoxes Are Just The Scar Tissue. Time And Space Heal Themselves Up Around Them And People Simply Remember A Version Of Events Which Makes As Much Sense As They Require It To Make.

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.

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.

You Barbarians!' He Yelled. 'i'll Sue The Council For Every Penny It's Got! I'll Have You Hung, Drawn And Quartered! And Whipped! And Boiled...until...until...until...until You've Had Enough.' Ford Was Running After Him. Very Very Fast. 'and Then I Will Do It Again!' Yelled Arthur, 'and When I've Finished I Will Take All The Little Bits, And I Will Jump On Them!

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

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

The Heart Of Gold Fled On Silently Through The Night Of Space, Now On Conventional Photon Drive. Its Crew Of Four Were Ill As Ease Knowing That They Had Been Brought Together Not Of Their Own Volition Or By Simple Coincidence, But By Some Curious Perversion Of Physics- As If Relationships Between People Were Susceptible To The Same Laws That Governed The Relationships Between Atoms And Molecules

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.

It Is Folly To Say You Know What Is Happening To Other People. Only They Know, If They Exist. They Have Their Own Universes Of Their Own Eyes And Ears.

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

Time, We Know, Is Relative. You Can Travel Light Years Through The Stars And Back, And If You Do It At The Speed Of Light Then, When You Return, You May Have Aged Mere Seconds While Your Twin Brother Or Sister Will Have Aged Twenty, Thirty, Forty Or However Many Years It Is, Depending On How Far You Traveled. This Will Come To You As A Profound Shock, Particularly If You Didn't Know You Had A Twin Brother Or Sister.

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

...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.

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

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

It Was One Of Those Pictures That Children Are Supposed To Like But Don't. Full Of Endearing Little Animals Doing Endearing Things, You Know?

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

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

Ha, But My Life Is A Box Of Wormgears.

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.

It Was None The Less A Perfectly Ordinary Horse, Such As Convergent Evolution Has Produced In Many Of The Places That Life Is To Be Found. They Have Always Understood A Great Deal More Than They Let On. It Is Difficult To Be Sat On All Day, Every Day, By Some Other Creature, Without Forming An Opinion About Them.

Aberystwyth (n.) A Nostalgic Yearning Which Is In Itself More Pleasant Than The Thing Being Yearned For.

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!

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.

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

And Wow! Hey! What's This Thing Coming Towards Me Very Fast? Very Very Fast. So Big And Flat And Round, It Needs A Big Wide Sounding Word Like... Ow... Ound... Round... Ground! That's It! That's A Good Name - Ground! I Wonder If It Will Be Friends With Me?

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

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".

He Almost Danced To The Fridge, Found The Three Least Hairy Things In It, Put Them On A Plate And Watched Them Intently For Two Minutes. Since They Made No Attempt To Move Within That Time He Called Them Breakfast And Ate Them. Between Them They Killed A Virulent Space Disease He'd Picked Up Without Knowing It In The Flargathon Gas Swamps A Few Days Earlier, Which Otherwise Would Have Killed Off Half The Population Of The Western Hemisphere, Blinded The Other Half, And Driven Everyone Else Psychotic And Sterile, So The Earth Was Lucky There.

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.

Will You Stop Counting!' Snarled Zaphod. 'yes,' Said Ford Prefect, 'in Three Minutes And Thirty-five Seconds.

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.

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.

Do You Find Coming To Terms With The Mindless Tedium Of It All Presents An Interesting Challenge?

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.

There Are Some Oddities In The Perspective With Which We See The World.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Just Supposing," He Said, "just Supposing" --he Didn't Know What Was Coming Next, So He Thought He'd Just Sit Back And Listen--"that There Was Some Extraordinary Way In Which You Were Very Important To Me, And That, Though You Didn't Know It, I Was Very Important To You, But It All Went For Nothing Because We Only Had Five Miles And I Was A Stupid Idiot At Knowing How To Say Something Very Important To Someone I've Only Just Met And Not Crash Into Lorries A The Same Time, What Would You Say..." He Paused, Helplessly, And Looked At Her. "i Should Do.

How Many Roads Must A Man Walk Down?

Ultimate Questions

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

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.

I Always Thought Something Was Fundamentally Wrong With The Universe

The Guide Is Definitive. Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

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.

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.

Nobody Likes A Whistler, Particularly Not The Divinity That Shapes Our Ends.

A Cup Of Tea Would Restore My Normality.

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.

The Future Of Computer Power Is Pure Simplicity.

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?

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

One Is Never Alone With A Rubber Duck.

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.

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.

Come On,” He Droned, “i’ve Been Ordered To Take You Down To The Bridge. Here I Am, Brain The Size Of A Planet And They Ask Me To Take You Down To The Bridge. Call That Job Satisfaction? ’cos I Don’t.” He Turned And Walked Back To The Hated Door. “er, Excuse Me,” Said Ford Following After Him, “which Government Owns This Ship?” Marvin Ignored Him. “you Watch This Door,” He Muttered, “it’s About To Open Again. I Can Tell By The Intolerable Air Of Smugness It Suddenly Generates.

"does God Know He [exists]?" "of Course He Does. Otherwise, You Could Not Have Asked The Question, And I Could Not Have Answered."

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.

It Is Known That There Are An Infinite Number Of Worlds, Simply Because There Is An Infinite Amount Of Space For Them To Be In. However, Not Every One Of Them Is Inhabited. Therefore, There Must Be A Finite Number Of Inhabited Worlds. Any Finite Number Divided By Infinity Is As Near To Nothing As Makes No Odds, So The Average Population Of All The Planets In The Universe Can Be Said To Be Zero. From This It Follows That The Population Of The Whole Universe Is Also Zero, And That Any People You May Meet From Time To Time Are Merely The Products Of A Deranged Imagination.

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.

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.

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

I Teleported Home Last Night With Ron And Sid And Meg Ron Stole Meggy's Heart Away And I Got Sidney's Leg.

You Turn The Computer Into The Storyteller And The Player Into The Audience, Like In The Old Days When The Storyteller Would Actually Respond To The Audience, Rather Than Just Having The Audience Respond To The Storyteller. I Had An Enormous Amount Of Fun, Actually, Working On That.

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

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

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.

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.

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

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.

He Had A Tremendous Propensity For Getting Lost When Driving. This Was Largely Because Of His Method Of “zen” Navigation, Which Was Simply To Find Any Car That Looked As If It Knew Where It Was Going And Follow It. The Results Were More Often Surprising Than Successful, But He Felt It Was Worth It For The Sake Of The Few Occasions When It Was Both.

I'm 48, Which Is A Bit Of A Shock To Me. Why Only Last Year I Thought I Was A Precocious Young Thing!

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.

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

Zaphod Beeblebrox, Adventurer, Ex-hippie, Good-timer (crook? Quite Possibly), Manic Self-publicist, Terrible Bad At Personal Relationships, Often Thought To Be Completely Out To Lunch.

The Idea Was Fantastically, Wildly Improbable. But Like Most Fantastically, Wildly Improbable Ideas It Was At Least As Worthy Of Consideration As A More Mundane One To Which The Facts Had Been Strenuously Bent To Fit.

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.

But What About The End Of The Universe? We'll Miss The Big Moment." I've Seen It. It's Rubbish," Said Zaphod,"nothing But A Gnab Gib." A What?" Opposite Of A Big Bang. Come On, Let's Get Zappy.

I Don't Go To Mythical Places With Strange Men.

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

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

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.

The Story Goes That I First Had The Idea For The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy While Lying Drunk In A Field In Innsbruck.

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.

People Who Need To Bully You Are The Easiest To Push Around.

'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.'

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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 Little Waiter's Eyebrows Wandered About His Forehead In Confusion.

Douglas Adams Did Not Enjoy Writing, And He Enjoyed It Less As Time Went On. He Was A Bestselling, Acclaimed, And Much-loved Novelist Who Had Not Set Out To Be A Novelist, And Who Took Little Joy In The Process Of Crafting Novels. He Loved Talking To Audiences. He Liked Writing Screenplays. He Liked Being At The Cutting Edge Of Technology And Inventing

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.

Protect Me From Knowing What I Don't Need To Know. Protect Me From Even Knowing That There Are Things To Know That I Don't Know. Protect Me From Knowing That I Decided Not To Know About The Things That I Decided Not To Know About. Amen. [...] Lord, Lord, Lord. Protect Me From The Consequences Of The Above Prayer.

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

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

We’ll Meet The Meat.

Believe Me, It Is A Great Deal Better To Find Cast-iron Proof That You're Innocent Than To Languish In A Cell Hoping That The Police---who Already Think You're Guilty---will Find It For You.

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.

Many Words And Expressions Which Only A Matter Of Decades Ago Were Considered So Distastefully Explicit That, Were They Merely To Be Breathed In Public, The Perpetrator Would Be Shunned, Barred From Polite Society, And In Extreme Cases Shot Through The Lungs, Are Now Thought To Be Very Healthy And Proper, And Their Use In Everyday Speech And Writing Is Evidence Of A Well-adjusted, Relaxed And Totally Un****ed-up Personality.

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.

And Then, Just When You Think That You Have Experienced All The Wonders That This World Has To Offer, You Round A Peak And Suddenly Think You're Doing The Whole Thing Over Again, But This Time On Drugs.

Rather Than Arriving Five Hours Late And Flustered, It Would Be Better All Around If He Were To Arrive Five Hours And A Few Extra Minutes Late, But Triumphantly In Command.

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

Space Is Unimaginably Big.

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 Usual People Tried To Claim Responsibility. First The Ira , Then The Plo And The Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels Rushed Out A Statement To The Effect That The Situation Was Completely Under Control, That It Was A One In A Million Chance, That There Was Hardly Any Radioactive Leakage At All, And That The Site Of The Explosion Would Make A Nice Location For A Day Out With The Kids And A Picnic, Before Finally Having To Admit That It Wasn't Actually Anything To Do With Them At All.

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.

Anything That Happens, Happens.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

If Life Is Going To Exist In A Universe Of This Size, Then The One Thing It Cannot Afford To Have Is A Sense Of Proportion.

Thought Provoking

You Just Come Along With Me And Have A Good Time. The Galaxy's A Fun Place. You'll Need To Have This Fish In Your Ear.

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

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

How Do You Feel?" He Asked Him. "like A Military Academy," Said Arthur. "bits Of Me Keep On Passing Out.

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

Technology Is The Name We Give To Stuff That Doesn't Work Properly Yet

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

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.

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 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.

Zaphod Did Not Want To Tangle With Them And, Deciding That Just As Discretion Is The Better Part Of Valor, So Was Cowardice Is The Better Part Of Discretion, He Valiantly Hid Himself In A Closet.

Life... Is Like A Grapefruit. Well, It's Sort Of Orangey-yellow And Dimpled On The Outside, Wet And Squidgy In The Middle. It's Got Pips Inside, Too. Oh, And Some People Have Half A One For Breakfast.

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