"Curran looked back at me. "Why is it you always attract creeps?"

"You tell me." Ha! Walked right into that one, yes, he did."
— Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes)

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"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."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet."
— Douglas Adams

"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. 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. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
— Douglas Adams

"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."
— Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)

"-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.-Galaxy Radio"
— Douglas Adams

"There's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"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."
— Douglas Adams

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's definition of "Universe":

The Universe is a very big thing that contains a great number of planets and a great number of beings. It is Everything. What we live in. All around us. The lot. Not nothing. It is quite difficult to actually define what the Universe means, but fortunately the Guide doesn't worry about that and just gives us some useful information to live in it.

Area: The area of the Universe is infinite.

Imports: None. This is a by product of infinity; it is impossible to import things into something that has infinite volume because by definition there is no outside to import things from.

Exports: None, for similar reasons as imports.

Population: None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero, therefore the average population of the Universe is zero, and so the total population must be zero.

Art: None. Because the function of art is to hold a mirror up to nature there can be no art because the Universe is infinite which means there simply isn't a mirror big enough.

Sex: None. Although in fact there is quite a lot, given the zero population of the Universe there can in fact be no beings to have sex, and therefore no sex happens in the Universe."
— Douglas Adams

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign)

"I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Shards of Honour)

"Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Memory)

"Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Mirror Dance)

"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Brothers in Arms)