The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

by Douglas Adams

The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about.

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

The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards.

Pan Galactic Gargle Basters

‘Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.’

Reckon a hitchhiker who knows where his towel is

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue).

Hooloovoo

Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

‘You know,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’ ‘Why, what did she tell you?’ ‘I don’t know, I didn’t listen.’

Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason why he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

‘I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.’

Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.’