A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with...

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get...

I’m very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself...

In an infinite Universe anything can happen,” said Ford, “Even survival. Strange but true.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Dave is one of my favorite sources of information and opinion on the Web. His opinions are passionately held, well-informed, intelligent, argumentative, and quite often wrong.

I guess when [novels] started, most early novels were just sort of pornography: Apparently, most media actually started as pornography and sort of grew from there. [Starship Titanic] is not a pornographic CD-ROM, I hasten...

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...

He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.

Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and...

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.

There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened.

The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years...

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

Life, will be a very great deal less weird without you!

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Aveva pensato che se gli esseri umani non si esercitavano in continuazione ad aprire e chiudere la bocca, correvano il rischio di cominciare a far lavorare il cervello.

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...

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...