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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.

-Douglas Adams

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Was There A Reason

Douglas Adams

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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.

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The Hitch Hiker's Guide Has Not Been An Opera. It Has However Been A Tapestry, If You Count A Woven Bath Towel As A Tapestry.

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.

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.

There Are Two Things In Particular That It [the Computer Industry] Failed To Foresee: One Was The Coming Of The Internet(...); The Other Was The Fact That The Century Would End.

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.

Nobody Got Murdered Before Lunch. But Nobody. People Weren't Up To It. You Needed A Good Lunch To Get Both The Blood-sugar And Blood-lust Levels Up.

...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.

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 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.

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.

We Are Now Cruising At A Level Of Two To The Power Of Twenty-five Thousand To One Against And Falling, And We Will Be Restoring Normality Just As Soon As We Are Sure What Is Normal Anyway.

I May Not Have Gone Where I Intended To Go, But I Think I Have Ended Up Where I Intended To Be.

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

The Fact That We Live At The Bottom Of A Deep Gravity Well, On The Surface Of A Gas Covered Planet Going Around A Nuclear Fireball 90 Million Miles Away And Think This To Be Normal Is Obviously Some Indication Of How Skewed Our Perspective Tends To Be.

Generally, Old Media Don't Die. They Just Have To Grow Old Gracefully. Guess What, We Still Have Stone Masons. They Haven't Been The Primary Purveyors Of The Written Word For A While Now Of Course, But They Still Have A Role Because You Wouldn't Want A Tv Screen On Your Headstone.

Can't Stand All These Poisonous Creatures, All These Snakes And Insects And Fish And Things. Wretched Things, Biting Everybody. And Then People Expect Me To Tell Them What To Do About It. I'll Tell Them What To Do. Don't Get Bitten In The First Place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland)

It Can Hardly Be A Coincidence That No Language On Earth Has Ever Produced The Expression "as Pretty As An Airport." Airports Are Ugly. Some Are Very Ugly. Some Attain A Degree Of Ugliness That Can Only Be The Result Of A Special Effort. This Ugliness Arises Because Airports Are Full Of People Who Are Tired, Cross, And Have Just Discovered That Their Luggage Has Landed In Murmansk (murmansk Airport Is The Only Exception Of This Otherwise Infallible Rule), And Architects Have On The Whole Tried To Reflect This In Their Designs.

Some Say That The Universe Is Made So That When We Are About To Understand It It Changes Into Something Even More Incomprehensible. And Then There Are Those Who Say That This Has Already Happened.

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.

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

Far Out In The Uncharted Backwaters Of The Unfashionable End Of The Western Spiral Arm Of The Galaxy Lies A Small Unregarded Yellow Pizza.

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.

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.

It Was His Subconscious Which Told Him This - That Infuriating Part Of A Person's Brain Which Never Responds To Interrogation, Merely Gives Little Meaningful Nudges And Then Sits Humming Quietly To Itself, Saying Nothing.

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

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish.

Democracies Have

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.

How Do I Know The Past Is Not A Fiction Conceived To Reconcile The Difference Between My State Of Mind And The Present.

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

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.

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.

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

In Cases Of Major Discrepancy Its Always Reality Thats Got It Wrong ... Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

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.

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

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

My Absolute Favourite 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.

Anything That Happens, Happens.

He Felt Like An Old Sponge Steeped In Paraffin And Left In The Sun To Dry.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Assumptions Are The Things We Don't Know We're Making.

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

Take A Deep Breath

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.

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

I Think The Idea Of Art Kills Creativity.

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

Time Doesn't Necessarily Happen In Chronological Order.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Kakapo Is A Bird Out Of Time. If You Look One In Its Large, Round, Greeny-brown Face, It Has A Look Of Serenely Innocent Incomprehension That Makes You Want To Hug It And Tell It That Everything Will Be All Right, Thought You Know That It Probably Will Not Be.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Radio Did Not Kill Books And Television Did Not Kill Radio Or Movies - What Television Did Kill Was Cinema Newsreel. Tv Does It Much Better Because It Can Deliver It Instantly. Who Wants Last Week's News?

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.

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

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

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.

There's Always A Moment When You Start To Fall Out Of Love, Whether It's With A Person Or An Idea Or A Cause, Even If It's One You Only Narrate To Yourself Years After The Event: A Tiny Thing, A Wrong Word, A False Note, Which Means That Things Can Never Be Quite The Same Again.

Falling In Love

I Think A Nerd Is A Person Who Uses The Telephone To Talk To Other People About Telephones. And A Computer Nerd Therefore Is Somebody Who Uses A Computer In Order To Use A Computer.

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.

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.

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

‎if You Ever Find You Need Help Again, You Know, If You're In Trouble, Need A Hand Out Of A Corner..." "yeah?" "please Don't Hesitate To Get Lost.

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.

In The Center Lay The Exploded Carcass Of A Lonely Sperm Whale That Hadn't Lived Long Enough To Be Disappointed With Its Lot.

There’s No Point In Acting Surprised About It. All The Planning Charts And Demolition Orders Have Been On Display At Your Local Planning Department In Alpha Centauri For 50 Of Your Earth Years, So You’ve Had Plenty Of Time To Lodge Any Formal Complaint And It’s Far Too Late To Start Making A Fuss About It Now... What Do You Mean You’ve Never Been To Alpha Centauri? Oh, For Heaven’s Sake, Mankind, It’s Only Four Light Years Away, You Know. I’m Sorry, But If You Can’t Be Bothered To Take An Interest In Local Affairs, That’s Your Own Lookout. Energize The Demolition Beams.

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 Think That Growing Up In A Crowded Continent Like Europe With An Awful Lot Of Competing Claims, Ideas, Cultures, And Systems Of Thought We Have, Perforce, Developed A More Sophisticated Notion Of What The Word Freedom Means Than I See Much Evidence Of In America. To Be Frank, It Sometimes Seems That The American Idea Of Freedom Has More To Do With My Freedom To Do What I Want Than Your Freedom To Do What You Want. I Think That In Europe We're Probably Better At Understanding How To Balance Those Competing Claims, Though Not A Lot.

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

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

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.

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

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 Love Deadlines. I Like The Whooshing Noise They Make As They Go By.

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.

If I Want To Read Something That's Really Giving Me Something Serious And Fundamental To Think About, About The Human Condition, If You Like, Or What We're All Doing Here, Or What's Going On, Then I'd Rather Read Something By A Scientist In The Life Sciences, Like Richard Dawkins, For Instance.

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

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

In Fact, A Very Similar Phrase Was Invented To Account For The Sudden Transition Of Wood, Metal, Plastic And Concrete Into An Explosive Condition, Which Was "nonlinear, Catastrophic Structural Exasperation," Or To Put It Another Way--as A Junior Cabinet Minister Did On Television The Following Night In A Phrase Which Was To Haunt The Rest Of His Career--the Check-in Desk Had Just Got "fundamentally Fed Up With Being Where It Was.

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.

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.

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

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 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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

On The Delivery Plate Of The Nutri-matic Drink Synthesizer Was A Small Tray, On Which Say Three Bone China Cups And Saucers, A Bone China Jug Of Milk, A Silver Teapot Full Of The Best Tea Arthur Had Ever Tasted And A Small Printed Note Saying "wait.

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

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

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 {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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

For Millions Of Years, On Average, One Species Became Extinct Every Century.... We Are Now Heaving More Than A Thousand Different Species Of Animals And Plants Off The Planet Every Year.

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.

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

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.

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".

So What Do We Do If We Get Bitten By Something Deadly?' I Asked. He Looked At Me As If I Were Stupid. 'you Die, Of Course. That's What Deadly Means.

For Seven And A Half Million Years, Deep Thought Computed And Calculated, And In The End Announced That The Answer Was In Fact Forty-two - And So Another, Even Bigger, Computer Had To Be Built To Find Out What The Actual Question Was.

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.

A Cup Of Tea Would Restore My Normality.

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.

The Complexities Of Cause And Effect Defy Analysis.

Cause And Effect

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

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.

I Always Thought Something Was Fundamentally Wrong With The Universe

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.

It All Sounds Rather Naive And Sentimental To Be Talking About Children Laughing And Dancing And Singing Together When We All Know Perfectly Well That What Children Do In Real Life Is Snarl And Take Drugs.

Reality Is Hopelessly Inaccurate.

...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.

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

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

But For A Moment Dirk Had A Sense Of Inifinite Loss And Sadness That Somewhere Among The Frenzy Of Information Noise That Daily Rattled The Lives Of Men He Thought He Might Have Heard A Few Notes That Denoted The Movements Of Gods.

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

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.

I'd Far Rather Be Happy Than Right Any Day.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This Man Is The Bee's Knees, Arthur, He Is The Wasp's Nipples. He Is, I Would Go So Far As To Say, The Entire Set Of Erogenous Zones Of Every Major Flying Insect Of The Western World.

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.

Earth: Mostly Harmless

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

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

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

I Am Rarely Happier Than When Spending An Entire Day Programming My Computer.

"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?"

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

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.

No One Really Knows What Mattresses Are Meant To Gain From Their Lives Either. They Are Large, Friendly, Pocket-sprung Creatures That Live Quiet Private Lives In The Marshes Of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many Of Them Get Caught, Slaughtered, Dried Out, Shipped Out And Slept On. None Of Them Seems To Mind This And All Of Them Are Called Zem.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Only Person For Whom The House Was In Any Way Special Was Arthur Dent, And That Was Only Because It Happened To Be The One He Lived In.

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.”

We Have Normality. I Repeat, We Have Normality. Anything You Still Can't Cope With Is Therefore Your Own Problem.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

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.

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.

Nothing Travels Faster Than The Speed Of Light, With The Possible Exception Of Bad News, Which Obeys Its Own Special Laws.

First We Thought The Pc Was A Calculator. Then We Found Out How To Turn Numbers Into Letters With Ascii — And We Thought It Was A Typewriter. Then We Discovered Graphics, And We Thought It Was A Television. With The World Wide Web, We've Realized It's A Brochure.

And All Dared To Brave Unknown Terrors, To Do Mighty Deeds, To Boldly Split Infinitives That No Man Had Split Before--and Thus Was The Empire Forged.

He Has Personality Problems Beyond The Dreams Of Analysts.

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 Picked Up The Letter Q And Hurled It Into A Distant Privet Bush Where It Hit A Young Rabbit. The Rabbit Hurtled Off In Terror And Didn’t Stop Till It Was Set Upon And Eaten By A Fox Which Choked On One Of Its Bones And Died On The Bank Of A Stream Which Subsequently Washed It Away. During The Following Weeks Ford Perfect Swallowed His Pride And Struck Up A Relationship With A Girl Who Had Been A Personnel Officer On Golgafrincham, And He Was Terribly Upset When She Suddenly Passed Away As A Result Of Drinking Water From A Pool That Had Been Polluted By The Body Of A Dead Fox.

"what's So Unpleasant About Being Drunk?" "ask A Glass Of Water."

This Planet Has - Or Rather Had - A Problem, Which Was This: Most Of The People Living On It Were Unhappy For Pretty Much Of The Time. Many Solutions Were Suggested For This Problem, But Most Of These Were Largely Concerned With The Movement Of Small Green Pieces Of Paper, Which Was Odd Because On The Whole It Wasn't The Small Green Pieces Of Paper That Were Unhappy.

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.

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

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.

Ford Looked At Him Severely. And No Sneaky Knocking Down Mr Dent's House Whilst He's Away, Alright?" He Said. The Mere Thought," Growled Mr Prosser, "hadn't Even Begun To Speculate," He Continued, Settling Himself Back, "about The Merest Possibility Of Crossing My Mind.

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

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.

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

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