Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

by Neil Gaiman

By the time you’ve read the opposite page (cast and credits) you’ll probably be feeling restive and wondering when the show will start. Well, it should start at the exact moment that you read the first word of the next sentence. If it hasn’t started yet, you’re reading too fast. If it still hasn’t started, you’re reading much too fast, and we can recommend our own book ‘How To Impair Your Reading Ability’, written and published by Adams-Smith-Adams. With the aid of this slim volume, you will find that your reading powers shrink to practically nothing within a very short space of time. The more you read, the slower you get. Theoretically, you will never get to the end, which makes it the best value book you will ever have bought!

“Writing comes easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds.

“I’m not a wit. A wit says something funny on the spot. A comedy writer says something very funny two minutes later. Or in my case, two weeks later.

I was very sorry not to get to go up it, though, having seen it, I have to say that I wasn’t very, very sorry.”