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...

Why’s this fish so bloody good?” he demanded, angrily.

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...

The mice were furious.”[…]”Oh yes,” said the old man mildly.”Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but…””Ah, but they hadn’t paid for it you see, had they?””Look,” said Arthur,...

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

I don’t know what this great thing I’m meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right? “The old me knew....

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.

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever...

Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?” “I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think...

Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.”Is there any tea on this spaceship?” he asked.

Life is wasted on the living.

I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.

The light was only just visible – except of course that there was no one to see, no witnesses, not this time, but it was nevertheless a light.

This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

No, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.