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...

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

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...

A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept...

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

The story goes that I first had the idea for THHGTTGalaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck

… The truth of the matter is, that most English people don’t know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the...

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...

Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.This is not quite true, in...

Q: Do you feel concerned that after all this work, people won’t treat [Starship Titanic] with the gravity of, say, a movie or a book? That they won’t treat it as an art form?D.A.: I...

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...

She thought that trying to live life according to any plan you actually work out is like trying to buy ingredients for a recipe from the supermarket. You get one of those trolleys which simply...

The difficulty with this conversation 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.

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.

If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?

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,...

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...

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted...

He sniggered.He didn’t like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half...

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.

No,” he said, “look, it’s very, very simple … all I want … is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen.” And he sat. He told...

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it.

Besides the pastor, there were about five people who had access to the safe, … Those people have been eliminated as suspects through the investigative process.

The little waiter’s eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion.

She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn’t believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it...

Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?Ford: We’re safe.Arthur: Oh good.Ford: We’re in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.Arthur: Ah,...

He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. “I...

People often ask where I get my ideas from, sometimes as often as eighty-seven times a day. This is a well-known hazard for writers, and the correct response to the question is first to breathe...

Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.

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...

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the...

He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it…

The point is, you see,” said Ford, “that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.

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.

Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying “Blood…blood…blood…blood…

But unless we determine to take action,’ said the old man querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in his nature, ‘then we shall all be destroyed, we shall all die. Surely we care...

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

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.

After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him.

The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

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.

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...

Where do you get inspiration for your books?I tell myself I can’t have another cup of coffee till I thought of an idea.

I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says...

Sorry, did I say something wrong?” said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless. “Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don’t know why I bother to say it, oh God I’m so...